In 2009, four Directorates of Nature parks, together with the Association of Parks in Bulgaria, participating as partners in a tripartite project between Belgium, Bulgaria and Macedonia named “Support for organizations active in nature protection, monitoring and development of sustainable agricultural practices, using methods of remote monitoring”. The project is part of Flemish cooperation program with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Performing organizations Aurea Imaging - a leading organization and partner of the Flemish side; DNP Persina; DNP Ruse Lom; DNP Strandja, DNP Bulgarka and the Association of Parks in Bulgaria by the Bulgarian side, the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning and the Balkan Foundation for Sustainable Development of Macedonian side. The total project cost is € 157,000 - € 70,000 of them is provided by the Flemish Government and the rest is contributed by the partners.
The main project objective is to build the necessary skills and knowledge among Bulgarian and Macedonian experts in conducting monitoring and compiling reports on the status of protected areas and territories through the use of modern methods of analysis and control of land use changes. There are trainings on interpretation of satellite photos and trainings on the obligations for monitoring and regular reports on the status of protected areas from NATURA 2000 network, in which conducting and compiling the analysis of satellite images plays a very important role.
The main benefits for each of the four Bulgarian parks departments are the purchase of satellite images for areas of parks, software for the analysis of images in the project, training in GIS and advanced training for the analysis of satellite images.
During the courses opportunity for participating have seven Directorates of Nature Parks in Bulgaria. The courses are common to the partners from Bulgaria and Macedonia and provide an opportunity for exchanging experience between colleagues from both sides.
The project can be viewed as a continuation of successfully conducted in 2007 BULGANAT project featuring Flemish partners and two directorates of natural parks in Bulgaria. They were conducted trainings on the use of geographic information systems. This project aims to profound and build on this knowledge.
The project duration is one year.
