The WILDisland project team and the experts from the Donau-Auen National Park, Austria hosted an excursion of the Living Danube Partnership on July 11th.
Two rubber boats paddled from Au-Terrasse-Stopfenreuth downstream to the edge of the Donau-Auen National Park, the mouth of the Morava river near the border with Slovakia. We showed the two crews several successful river restoration projects, such as the Spittelauer Arm restoration, the future Merlin project and the WILDisland concept for river redynamization and hydrology improvement, stressing on the need of international and cross-sector cooperation for effective conservation.
The Living Danube Partnership is a unique, cross‑sectoral partnership that has brought together WWF‑CEE, the Coca‑Cola Foundation and the Coca‑Cola system as well as the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) to promote the conservation and restoration of wetlands in the Danube basin.
On 12 July they are holding a workshop with their partners from Coca-Cola to discuss future cooperation - and the continuation of the Living Danube Partnership until 2030. In the future they want to work more closely with other partners ("collective action"), and the WILDisland initiative and the DANUBEPARKS Association provide excellent opportunities for cooperation. We hope we managed to convince our visitors how valuable and fascinating our riparian sites and habitats are and how important our restoration and non-intervention work is!
