On Friday, 29th June 2018, the first “letter of intent” for non-intervention management was signed by Dr. Marcel Huber, the Bavarian Minister for Environment, to ensure natural development and wilderness on two islands with an area of 5 hectares!

This is the first step to bring the WILDisland initiative onto the ground! It underlines the interest from the political level to take over the WILDisland concept into the local, Danube-wide and even EU policies.

It was a river morphology expert workshop in 2013 (Bratislava) when the WILDisland initiative was discussed for the first time by the DANUBEPARKS Network. Within DANUBEparksCONNECTED, a professional inventory was set up, which is now ready and published on http://wildisland.danubeparks.org/ . 

Now, the 2nd Danube Volunteers Day organized by our Bavarian partners prepared the perfect frame for signing this very first commitment.

Beside this great step forward, we started the signing process of the WILDisland commitment by all DANUBEPARKS Directors. As very first, Stela Bozhinova, Director of Persina Nature Park signed this commitment. This commitment underlines the interest and willingness of the Danube River Network of Protected Areas to work actively on the conservation of the Danube Wild Island Habitat Corridor. It will help to anchor the WILDisland initiative on policy level, but it could help also on local level to reach conservation commitments for specific WILDislands (e.g. formulated as an Annex).  

Dr. Marcel Huber signing the Letter of Intent for non-intervention management regarding the first two islands.

Photos: Siegfried Geißler