During our international workshop “Wildlife and winter sport activities” in the Bauges regional nature park in March 2016, the participants have expressed a strong wish to elaborate a common communication strategy. In the frame of the project WeWild - We respect Alpine wildlife -, ALPARC aims at developing – for the protected areas of the Alps –a joint communication strategy and awareness-raising tools in order to reduce the impact of winter sport practitioners on wildlife in the Alps. The aim of the project is to send out a joint awareness-raising message to winter outdoor practitioners in the Alps in order to give greater momentum to local and regional initiatives.

Alparc coordinates the project and pursues a participatory approach, involving protected area staff and other stakeholders. A first workshop will take place in March 23 and 24 in Vorarlberg (AT). The aim of this first meeting is share experiences in awareness-raising campaigns and to elaborate the contents of the joint strategy (see programme attached). A second workshop will take place in November 2017 in the Italian Alps (to be confirmed). The workshop is open to experts from the Alpine protected areas and other stakeholders, such as Alpine clubs, environmental NGOs and regional governments.

The project will also develop awareness-raising tools that are free to use and share (available from January 2018). The project will use partnerships with the private sector, festivals and sporting events to disseminate the tools and to implement the communication strategy in the medium run. A final conference in November 2018 will bring further momentum to our initiative, presenting the results and gathering a large number of Alpine stakeholders around the topic.

The project is supported by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment (BMUB). For more information and in order to register for the workshop, please contact us directly.

ALPARC project coordinator: Dominik Cremer-Schulte | dominik.cremer-schulte@alparc.org
Website: www.alparc.org/wewild