Image of the Botanical Garden of Bucharest © Ministerul Mediului – Romania
Bucharest – June 7th & 8th, 2017, The Romanian Ministry of Environment, LIFE National Contact Point (NCP), held the “LIFE Infoday” event at the Botanical Garden in Bucharest to celebrate 25 years of LIFE Programme and the EU Habitats Directive. The event started on the 7th of June with the arrival of the LIFE caravan parked outside the National Library.
The day of the 8th of June 2017, held in the Botanical Garden of Bucharest, was dedicated to general talks about the LIFE Programme, sharing of best practices from completed and ongoing projects, news on the LIFE 2017 Programme as well as individual presentations of LIFE projects that are being implemented in the current period. Similarly to the event that had been organised in Brussels earlier in May, the project „LIFE for Danube Sturgeons” captured the audience’s interest and various questions followed after the presentation of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve Authority, ending up in a lively discussion about the most endangered fish species on the planet. A special contribution to the sturgeon project’s presentation came from the representative of EASME (Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises), who highlighted the project’s strong elements that had distinguished it from the rest of the proposals and made it eligible for financing.
The programme over the two days was rich in activities, including an official ceremony, a photo exhibition presented by the Ministry of Environment together with the beneficiaries of LIFE projects, LIFE films screening, planting of chestnut trees brought from Târgu-Jiu (the area of chestnut trees habitat that was rehabilitated in the Project LIFE+ 11/NAT/RO/825 – Conservative Management), and interactive games with school children on environmental themes. The ultimate purpose of the organisers was to inform the relevant stakeholders, local authorities, the public and the media about the considerable achievements of EU nature legislation and the LIFE programme throughout the past quarter-century.
