Breifly about the LIFE project

LIFE is a European Union initiative, which provides financial resources for the preservation of flora and fauna and development of habitats of community importance.

The LIFE programme has three main fields of activity: environmental protection (Environment), nature conservation (Nature) and support to countries outside the EU (Third Countries). LIFE Nature provides financial instruments for the realisation of exemplary conservation management programmes, complex preservation of habitats of European significance, as well as their development with the purpose of nature conservation. In Hungary the first two projects were launched in 2001, one of them was the WWF Tisza-LIFE project.

The Steppe Oak Woods of Nagykőrös nature conservation site won a LIFE Nature grant in 2006. It is aimed at the long-term preservation and, if needed, restoration of the steppe oak woods and Pannonic sand steppes, the habitats of community importance that served as a basis for the Natura 2000 designation of the site.

Within the frameworks of the LIFE Project Duna–Ipoly National Park Directorate will conclude agreements with private forest owners ensuring that only conservation management activities can be conducted for 90 years in the steppe oak woods of best status.

The Steppe Oak Woods of Nagykőrös LIFE-Nature project will be implemented between 2006 and 2011. Its total budget is 1.863.236 EUR, 75 % of which is EU support.