On of the most prominent “products” of IENE so far is the COST 341 Action, “Habitat Fragmentation due to Transportation Infrastructure“, made within the framework of the COST program (European Cooperation in Science and Technology ). The COST 341 products have been translated into many languages and are known worldwide.
Background
COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding organisation for the creation of research networks and for the coordination of national subsidized research striving for an exchange of information on international scale.
The COST 341 Action started in 1998 and ran until September 2003. It was completed with an international conference in Brussels in November 2003. The main objective of the project was to promote a safe and sustainable pan-European transport infrastructure through recommending measures and planning procedures with the aim of conserving biodiversity and reducing traffic accidents involving wildlife and resulting fauna casualties.
Participants
Sixteen countries (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Hungary, Ireland, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) and one NGO (the European Centre for Nature Conservation, ECNC) participated. Experts from over 21 European countries were actively involved in the activities of IENE.
Resulting documents
The project resulted in the following documents:
National Reports
In the first stage, the research was carried out by each participating country separately. It was desirable that each country would be represented by institutions from both sectors, transportation and environment, in order to improve the quality of the survey.
In the second stage, the information given by the national overviews was analysed and compiled in order to produce a single European report.
Some countries did not produce a national report, but made a compilation of the situation in their country: Austria (signed the action, but had no official delegate to make the national report), Cyprus, Estonia, Ireland (came into the COST 342 Action after the national reports had been produced) and Portugal.
The national state-of-the-art reports on Habitat Fragmentation due to Linear Transportation Infrastructure contain:
- habitat fragmentation and infrastructure:
- effects on nature
- overview of environmental bottlenecks/maps
- current situation regarding solutions
- overview of mitigation/ compensation measures
- evaluation / effectiveness
- legislative framework
- on-going research
- review of relevant case studies and projects
- identification of research areas and recommendations
- directory of institutions and organisations involved
- bibliography
National State of Art Reports on Habitat Fragmentation due to Linear Transportation Infrastructure from 13 countries