A ‘Green Bridge’ opened by the Ministry of Environment of the Slovak Republic this summer will connect the two major Pan-European mountain ranges - the Alps and the Carpathians – with the aim of curbing the loss of wildlife there.

The bridge was inaugurated on the highway at Moravský Svätý Ján near Bratislava on 8 July and was one of the follow-up activities of the EU-funded ‘Alpine Carpathian Corridor’ project, which continues to bear fruits two years after its completion.

It follows a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) facilitated by UN Environment and signed by all relevant stakeholders, including the national and regional authorities as well as the national highway companies. Followed up with an action plan, the MoU exercise ensured the long-term political commitment of involved parties and the sustainability of the project.

The Alps and Carpathian mountains are among the most species-rich in Europe. However, landscapes in and between these mountain ranges are becoming increasingly fragmented, resulting in the growing loss of wildlife habitat. The need to reconnect the two ranges to secure migration and genetic flow among populations of species, via an ecological corridor gained broad recognition in the mid-2000s.

Measures to advance the action plan on the ground included technical support for building wildlife overpasses across motorways; support to integration of the corridor into spatial planning instruments; capacity building; and training and tourism development activities, such as establishing an educational bike trail alongside the corridor.

The transboundary project involved various partners including: the Provincial Government of Lower Austria, UN Environment, Daphne, WWF, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna as well as Slovak and Austrian national highway companies NDS and ASFINAG.

For more information please contact matthias.jurek@unvienna.org