The year is almost over, and in the meantime the LIFEstockProtect project is gaining momentum. In November the project reports 27 activities including all 17 beneficiaries. Due to the current status of the pandemic most activities took place online, but this did not at all affect their success. On the contrary: even more people were able to join! Besides that, the communication team analysed the media presence of LIFEstockProtect so far and the results were striking.
Conferences, presentations and meetings!
Natuschutzhunde held an online conference for members, partners, interested people, and multipliers in the middle of November. The chairwoman presented LIFEstockProtect with a focus on the role of scat dogs to 60 participants. The conference dealt on the one hand with the factors that influence successful scat dog work and on the other hand with their role in solving nature conservation crimes. The speakers explained for example how wind, temperature and physical stress, as well as early support for puppies, can influence scat dogs at work. Livestock guarding dogs play another important role in livestock protection. Do you want to learn more about how livestock guarding dogs protect their livestock herd and how they are trained? Then check out these two documentaries.
Naturschutzbund Österreich presented the project at the annual meeting of the presiding board. Specifically, they shared information about the planned stakeholder analysis (Action A.2) and the thematic workshops (Action C.3). Furthermore, they asked for input for both of regional groups of Naturschutzbund Österreich. They also held a movie presentation in person, of course adhering to Covid19 regulations, screening the movie “Rückkehr der Wölfe” (Comeback of the wolf). After the movie, they shared information about wolves in Austria and presented LIFEstockProtect to the audience. This was a great event to establish valuable contacts with different stakeholders including veterinarians, farmers, and conservationists.
EURAC held a presentation about the tourist survey from 2018 at the Museum of Science in Bozen and gave an outlook of LIFEstockProtect actions that aim to improve the coexistence of tourism and livestock protection measure by implementing practical tools like workshops and field visits. They also participated together with the European Wilderness Society in a meeting with the Fachschule Salern, which initiated the development of an official certification scheme for shepherds in South Tyrol as part of the planned livestock protection trainings.
Bioland Beratung GmbH and Bioland Bayern introduced LIFEstockProtect to the Fachausschuss Schaf und Ziege, a committee of honory sheep and goat keepers that discusses directives, political, and agricultural developments.
Finally, Stefanie Morbach was hired by BUND Naturschutz Bayern to support the project.
Networking with other LIFE projects
BIOAUSTRIA Niederösterreich und Wien and the European Wilderness Society participated in the second part of the Welcome Meeting from EASME and NEEMO for all the LIFE coordinating beneficiaries of newly approved projects. They had the opportunity to present LIFEstockProtect to fellow LIFE Nature projects focusing on different species (LIFE Beavers, LIFE SYSEL, LIFE Bears with future, LIFE LYNXCONNECT). You can read more about the meeting in this blog post.
Additionally, the communication team got in contact with other LIFE projects outside of the project region, WolfBoreal and LIFE SWiPE among others, to form valuable connections for future collaborations.
Internally, all beneficiaries worked together to organise the official Kick-off Conference in January. This will be an exciting event and all interested individuals will be invited to join. We will hear about practical experiences of livestock farmers in Austria, Bavaria and South Tyrol. Interested? We will share more details soon. You can sign up for our newsletter to make sure that you don’t miss it. They also progressed in all preparatory A actions. For example, within the action A.2 a Stakeholder Analysis will be conducted, coordinated by Naturschutzbund Österreich, for which project-internal expertise is used to apply sound scientific methods to develop a stakeholder matrix and engagement plan.
LIFEstockProtect in the news
The project has been covered by the news extensively already! Since the project start in September until the end of November, we recorded more than 70 newspapers, magazines, and social media appearances – too many to share them all. Thus, we created a news specific page to share our favorite press appearances with you. You can find them in in our Press Center here, have a look!
