Explore the secrets of wilderness!

To obtain the truthful portrait and science of wilderness PAN Parks Foundation agreed with several wilderness advocates to write blogs on the Stories of Wilderness page. The page started as a project in cooperation with Bruno D’Amicis, Italian wildlife photographer, who wanted to spend more than 5000 hours in the field in Italian Majella National Park. However after over 2000 hours on the field, we recognised that Bruno’s stories should also be accompanied with more scientifically driven contents. So the Stories of Wilderness is turned into a blog page where our constituencies are able to express their opinions and contribute to gathering further knowledge about wilderness. Read more about the project

Latest blog posts

RSS

Posted by Zoltan Kun, Executive Director, PAN Parks Foundation

After the long winter, spring has finally arrived in most parts of Europe and you see that people are approaching to go out. It looks as – at least deep in our heart – all of us are outdoor addicts!

See the people on this picture above – I bet many of them are tourists – sitting along the river Spee in Berlin downtown area, not far from Reichstag. They need an environment which is full of natural features, lawn and water at least to increase the joy of being out.

I am a landscape architect myself, who learned how to design public and private green spaces. But I have actually never designed one single garden or park. I always worked in nature conservation because the ultimate outdoor experience is in not built nature. I fall in love with wilderness and luckily I can work for it!

Healthy wilderness means healthy people!

Posted by Vlado Vancura (Conservation Manager, PAN Parks Foundation)

World Health Day is celebrated on 7th April to mark the anniversary of the founding of World Health Organization in 1948. Each year a theme is selected for World Health Day to highlight a priority area of public health concern in the world. The theme for 2013 is high blood pressure.

High blood pressure – also known as raised blood pressure or hypertension – increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes and kidney failure. If left uncontrolled, high blood pressure can also cause blindness, irregularities of the heartbeat and heart failure. The risk of developing these complications is higher in the presence of other cardiovascular risk factors such as diabetes. One in three adults worldwide has high blood pressure.

Can we learn from the success of Earth Hour?

Posted by Zoltan Kun, Executive Director, PAN Parks Foundation

Earth Hour is a very effective awareness raising tool to call the attention of the large public to the climate change. Led by WWF, one of PAN Parks’ founding partners, this event became a major public conservation happening in the past years across the globe.

Our team at PAN Parks was wondering how the Earth Hour can actually benefit Europe’s wilderness. First of all we should look at Europe’s satellite image and we can easily recognise that the attempt to call people switching off their lights would not have an effect in wilderness areas. Large scale wilderness places, like Certified PAN Parks, are the few locations where we – Europeans - can still enjoy real dark sky! The light pollution is minimal!