September 2-9 a small team of LT&C penguins will visit 3 national parks on the borders of Poland, Ukraine and Slovakia, in the Eastern Carpathian, also known as “Wolf Mountains“. The aim is to study how the Bieszczady National Park (Poland), Uzhansky NP (Ukraine) and Poloniny NP (Slovakia) work together and how this trilateral cooperation can develop further. Can tourism be of any support to this process ?

Maybe the area could once also function as an LT&C-Example, where tourism supports the the protection of these outstanding European wilderness areas. Maybe other regions (including Norway, where human relationships to wolfs even seem to influence the outcome of the elections September 11 for the national parliament and government) could learn from their management of wolfs and other wildlife and see how tourism and local communities can benefit from healthy populations of carnivores.

There are many layers of cooperation existing in the region, and several conservation NGOs with different local, regional and international concepts are involved since longer. It will be interesting to see how local tourism could be linked to a common conservation vision and progress. Participating in our study team are also LT&C Partner The European Wilderness Society and the Frankfurt Zoological Society. They will share their experience with LT&C.

We will report about our findings. Stay tuned.