During March, we organized the first two workshops as part of the project “Wildlife Watch – increasing capacities for the sustainable use and monitoring of wildlife”. The workshops were attended by thirty representatives of our partners from the public institutions Northern Velebit National Park, NP Paklenica, Velebit Nature Park, Grabovača Cave Park and the association Lička ekološka akcija.

At the first workshop the topics of the lectures were national categories and management of protected areas, held by Vedran Lucić from the Association BIOM and biologist Željka Rajković. Patricija Granić, from the Association Sunce, held a lecture on the Aarhus Convention and access to information and thus offered useful working tools for employees of public institutions and representatives of associations that manage protected areas. Also, employees from the Nature Park Velebit, the largest nature park in Croatia, shared their experiences about field work. We also organized a photography workshop, led by well known Croatian biologist and photographer Goran Šafarek.

During the second workshop Patricija Gambiroža from the State Institute for Nature Protection, gave a lecture on inventarisation and monitoring in Croatia. The second day of the workshop we discussed volunteer monitoring programs (Vedran Lucić and Ivana Šarić, Association BIOM), the Flora Croatica Database (Tomislav Hudina, Association BIOM) and introduction to GIS (Ivan Katanović, Association BIOM). Also, during the second day of the workshop we visited  the forest Jasikovac  were in the field we discussed the potential pressures and threats to biodiversity in the area.

We would like to thank all participants of the workshop, as well as the JU Velebit Nature Park for their hospitality!

Fotografija: Stjepan Renje