ZAGREB, October 14, 2018 – The Sava Parks network of protected areas in the Sava River basin has been granted 1,604,137 euro from EU funds for a new project that will be carried out over the next three years in four countries to find an effective method of suppressing and removing invasive alien plant species.
The grant is part of the interregional programme Sava Ties, Preserving Sava River Basin Habitats through Transnational Management of Invasive Alien Species.
“Those plants aren’t just a problem as far as nature protection is concerned but they also have a negative effect on human health, for example allergies caused by ragweed, and cause big economic losses,” it was said at the presentation of the programme in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad.
The project will be implemented in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia.
The project’s partners include the German-based EuroNatur Foundation, the Ljubljansko Barje landscape park in Slovenia; the Lonjsko Polje nature park and Zagreb County’s Green Ring in Croatia; the Una nature park and the Centre for the Environment in Bosnia and Herzegovina; the Vojvodina Province environment agency, the Pokret Gorana Sremska Mitrovica nature reserve and the Vojvodina Šume public forest management company in Serbia.
Invasive alien species are plants, animals and other organisms that change nature habitats of European significance and are extremely difficult to remove. It is estimated that they cause 1.4 billion dollars in damage to the global economy.
