One of the advantages of being on the HERCULES team is that next to analyzing and discussing landscapes one gets the chance of experiencing a diversity of cultural landscapes in person. A small HERCULES team left the assembly meeting in Lesvos amidst the olive groves of Gera, to take a direct plane to South West Devon, probably one of the most beautiful HERCULES case study sites. We, however, were not there to merely enjoy the fantastic views over the rolling hills of Devon, Dartmoor National Park and the abundance of traditional hedgerows. We were to find out what the future of this landscape could be like. As it often is with valuable cultural heritage, it may take centuries to grow, but can be greatly altered in just a few decades. How does the landscape of Devon cope with the imperative of scale enlargement, the influx of amenity migrants from more urbanized areas, and the possible BREXIT? (editor: the workshop took place before the UK referendum)
Read more »The landscape where now stand the Grand Parc Miribel Jonage, immediately upstream of Lyon, France, was originally perceived as an uncontrolled space, with the exercise of quasi illegal economic activity like poaching. The “wilderness” and the tumultuous river offered a place for young men becoming adults braving the dangers. When pressures from urban expansion got higher, Rhône pirates from the city southern islands even tried to win territory on the locals, though both where defeated by the community taking over.
Read more »Since 1987 Colmenar Viejo (Spain) organises an annual photo contest that has grown in quality and importance to reach international impact. Photographers of the standing of Enrique López-Tapia de Inés, Isabel Díaz San Vicente and Juan Tebar Carrera have participated and been awarded in this contest since its beginnings. This year, the main price has been a trip to Antarctica on a historic sailing boat; and due to the synergies built between the municipality and HERCULES (Colmenar Viejo is one of the Study Landscapes of the project) the main topic of the contest has been the landscapes of Colmenar Viejo.
Read more »Throughout Europe, numerous examples exist of traditional dishes that depend on local wild plants, mushrooms, or game meat. Traditional cuisines are commonly developed based on the locally available products, and in many European regions this comprised a wealth of food collected from the wild. Picking berries, plants, or mushrooms, hunting, and angling, are important activities and possibilities for doing so are strongly related to landscape management. Should wild food collecting be considered in landscape stewardship, and which possibilities exist for that?
Read more »Citizen science has played an increasingly important role in recent decades as the top-down approach to natural resource management has been rejected due to its social, environmental, and economical unsustainability. An alternative approach to top-down management that recognizes community stewards and citizen science programs as valuable partners in management and regulatory decision-making is recommended in the literature as a best practice in resource management, and the significance of its emerging role highlighted. This shift is reflected globally through policy initiatives of the United Nations such as Agenda 21 or the Aarhus Convention, which emphasized that the environmental challenges faced by societies worldwide cannot be dealt with by public authorities alone.
Read more »No attempt to implement the European Landscape Convention can be successful without knowing what is important to local people. In the UK the demand for a more locally focussed agenda is being met in part by the making of Community Plans, typically for a village and the land surrounding, which form a parish. In the deeper countryside, this administrative parish is often coterminous with the ecclesiastical parish centred on the parish church, and that is so in Winkleigh, the village in the middle of Devon, in South West England, which is the subject of this article.
Read more »The Tree of the Year contest was initiated four years ago in the Czech Republic by Nadace Partnerství and it is now organized by the Environmental Partnership Association, with the aim of highlighting the significance of old trees in the natural and cultural heritage. The contest search for trees with particular stories connected to the communities in which they grow, trees that have become a part of people’s lives and serve as a community-gathering element.
Read more »I would imagine that the concept of ‘cultural landscapes’ is not immediately obvious to the average person. So why would the European Commission want to support a collaborative research project to protect and manage cultural landscapes, called the HERCULES project? Some clarity was provided at the first Stakeholder Workshop on the project, organised by the European Landowners Organization in Brussels late last month.
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