In the spring of 2025, the staff of the Hortobágy National Park Directorate organized a field day across several sites of the Grassland-HU project, which aims to ensure the long-term conservation of Pannonian grasslands and their associated habitats. Thanks to the habitat management activities carried out to date, we observed thriving plant communities at our demonstration sites.
The concerted and systematic collaboration of scientific disciplines, state authorities, and the public is indispensable for the conservation of endangered species. Species Action Plans serve precisely this purpose, outlining the threatening factors and the objectives and measures of the action program implemented for their protection.
As part of the Grassland-HU LIFE integrated project, the publication “Grassland Subsidy Opportunities in the Light of the Common Agricultural Policy 2021-2027” was published by the National Chamber of Agriculture. The document is available online (see below)and on the Chamber’s website.
The Kocsér Grassland Conservation Management Advisory and Landscape Unit Center's handover ceremony took place on 12th-13th September 2024.
Until the beginning of the last century, when the mechanization of mowing did not begin, it was a slow-paced work process that was done with hand tools and human power. The harvest progressed slowly, in a larger area it could take up to weeks, so freshly mowed, unmowed, and re-sprouted patches were created to varying degrees, creating the most favorable mosaic.
The grasslands must not only be dense, it must also be alive. Nowadays, the main role belongs to modern tools, and grass management can be carried out in a nature-friendly way. Always keep in mind: the grasslands is primarily a habitat! The species living in there, are important participants in the ecological balance, so not only they, but also the crop yield is vulnerable.
In Péter Bacsó's absurdist classic film The Witness, the communist state accuses the protagonist and his disgraced friend of passing "secret messages in ground squirrels skins" to the frogmen. According to the story, the two characters do indeed come into contact with the "dam's greatest enemy, the ground squirrel", beating the crap out of a (european) hamster.
Representatives of the European Commission's Nature Conservation Directorate have arrived in Hungary for a bilateral meeting on the Natura 2000 network. The meeting, which took place on 14-15 February 2024, provided the opportunity to discuss specific nature conservation issues and to present the results of the Grassland-HU LIFE integrated project.
Based on the experiences of the past years, the staff of the Grassland Conservation Management Advisory Service and the Hortobágy National Park Administration summarized the latest nature conservation knowledge regarding the Hungarian grassland management in their smart calendar, which was published as part of the Grassland-HU LIFE integrated project.
On 28 November 2023, the fourth installment of The Secrets of Grasslands photo competition was awarded.Exhibition of the 30 best photos was opened at the Herman Ottó Conference Centre.