On the 31st of May, Jutta Jahrl, currently Project Manager of “LIFE for Danube Sturgeons’’ was given the opportunity to present two LIFE funded WWF projects with focus on sturgeon: “Joint actions to raise awareness on overexploitation of Danube sturgeons in Romania and Bulgaria” (2012-2015) and the follow-up “Sustainable protection of lower Danube sturgeons by preventing and counteracting poaching and illegal wildlife trade” (LIFE for Danube Sturgeons; 2016-2020). The event took place in Brussels and it was attended by more than 500 business, industry, NGOs, and authorities representatives. The European Commission selected only 3 coordinating LIFE beneficiaries to showcase their work to the audience at the Information & Networking Event on the 2017 funding opportunities under the EU’s environmental programme.
What makes the two projects led by WWF-Austria interesting to the people in the area of EU funded initiatives is not only the sturgeons’ highly endangered status, but also the courageous work of the project teams with fishermen, that is particularly challenging in the South-East part of Europe. Jutta Jahrl talked about what was learned in the first project and how that is applicable to the new one, and shared experiences and challenges with the potential candidates. The success of the first sturgeon project stimulated WWF-Austria to look at the possibility to expand the scope of countries in that area of work and thus, joined efforts for a second project with two non-EU Member States partners – WWF-Serbia and WWF in Ukraine. Moreover, Ms Jahrl presented concrete and inspiring examples of how the choice of partners, stakeholders and activities to have in order to achieve the overall objective is key for a successful project proposal and highlighted her speech by sharing that, ‘The LIFE programme gives you the chance and resources to do what you have always considered crucial to do in nature conservation.’
The event in May was part of the LIFE 2017 call for project proposals campaign which aims to stimulate new opportunities for green jobs and growth and will therefore provide more than €390 million to candidates.
To watch the full presentation, see the video below or go to https://youtu.be/B4Lzv4AkFYA
If you’re interested to find out more about the LIFE 2017 call for proposals, explore the official LIFE Programme website.
