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IENE Awards

IENE recognises and awards outstanding efforts made to reduce the detrimental effects of transport infrastructure on nature and enhance its potential for a positive influence.
Such efforts may appear as extraordinary impact assessments, mitigation plans or technical measures at local, national or regional scale; research achievements, information, education or promotion activities. The IENE Award comprises a public recognition and does not include any grants.

IENE awards are given in two variants:

    1.    the IENE Personal Award appreciates outstanding engagement and special achievements made by individuals that are not necessarily related to a particular activity;

    2.    the IENE Project Award appreciates extraordinary work accomplished  by initiatives, activities or plans.

Nominations can be made by all IENE members to the IENE Steering Committee, who carefully evaluates all proposals and announces the winners at the upcoming IENE General Assembly, workshop or conference.

 

IENE Awards 2012

• IENE Personal Award 2012

  The IENE Steering Committee is pleased to announce that the IENE Personal Award 2012 is given to Djuro Huber from Croatia. He is professor for biology at the Veterinary Faculty in Zagreb and has been teaching students since 1975. His main subject is large carnivore research and management.
  Due to his lifelong dedication many projects and mitigation measures have been realised in Croatia and Southeastern Europe. Currently he has been involved in the construction of 11 green bridges along new highways in Croatia.

• IENE Project Award 2012

The IENE Project Award 2012 is given to the "Alpine Carpathian Corridor Project", a collaboration between Austria and Slovakia. Lead partner of the project is the Government of Lower Austria, Nature Protection, the project management is done by Weinviertel Management in Austria and Daphne – Centre of Applied Ecology in Slovakia.
The Alpine Carpathian is a major migration route that connects the eastern reaches of the Alps with the western Carpathians. Today a part of this area, between Vienna, Bratislava and Sopron, is one of the most economically dynamic regions in Europe, which causes severe conflicts between economic development and ecology.
In this cross border project various institutions, NGOs as well as regional and federal authorities work together. Two greenbridges will be built, one in each country to overcome the main traffic routes. The Action Plan has a multi-level, cross-sectoral and trans-national approach and describes all necessary activities to achieve sustainable regional development and the maintenance of the Alpine Carpathian Corridor. A Memorandum of Understanding that clearly defines obligations and responsibilities was signed by representatives of the federal and regional governments as well as representatives of the national highway agencies.

 

IENE Awards 2011

• IENE Personal Award 2011

  The IENE Personal Award 2011 is given to Carme Rosell at Minuartia in Catalonia, Spain. Carme has been active in the IENE network since it was founded in 1996. She was one of the authors of the COST 341 Handbook. She has promoted the organisation of an influential Spanish working group that has galvanised opinion and brought influence to bear on the development of national policy. The working group was constitued in 1999 and is coordinated by the Spanish Ministry of Environment and also undertakes technical prescriptions and publishes an excellent regular newsletter. Carme is not only a sharp minded scientist, an excellent organiser and a dedicated IENE personality but she is also a kind and helpful colleague, who gives valuable support to others in an unobtrusive way.
  
  

• IENE Project Award 2011

The IENE Steering Committee gladly announces that the IENE Project Award 2011 is given to the project ”Landscape fragmentation in Europe” run by

• Prof. Dr. Jochen A.G. Jaeger at the Concordia University in Montreal in Canada,
• Dr. Luis F.Madriñán at the Concordia University in Montreal in Canada,
  
• Tomáš Soukup at GISAT s.r.o. in the Czech republic,
  
• Christian Schwick at the Die Geographen schwick+spichtig in Switzerland and
  
• Prof. Dr. Felix Kienast at the Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape (WSL) in Switzerland.
  

The project was presented at the IENE 2010 International Conference in Hungary and the final report was recently published on the EEA website. The report presents the extent of landscape fragmentation across the entire continent using a significant sound method. It reveals the most significant driving forces behind fragmentation, demonstrating that varying factors are relevant in different parts of Europe. The project combines recent data on landscape and infrastructure with high-end research and science.

 

IENE Awards 2010

• IENE Personal Award 2010
  

  The IENE Personal Award 2010 is given to Hans Bekker from the Netherlands “for the protection of nature and biodiversity and the long-time commitment to improve the environmental impact of transportation infrastructure, supporting colleagues, new ideas and projects in Europe”.

  Hans Bekker works within the Traffic and Navigation Centre (DVS), an internal advisory unit of the Directorate General for Public Works and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat) of the Ministry of transport and Water Management where he leads the Long Term de-fragmentation Program. Hans Bekker is a nature engineer, specialised in bridging gaps between civil engineers and ecologists, between policy and work floor, between planners and nature protectors.
  Hans Bekker was the initiator of IENE in 1995 and has ever since has been one of the driving forces behind the network. Hans has chaired the IENE steering committee and the COST-action 341 on Habitat fragmentation due to transport infrastructure. He is a member of the ICOET steering committee, the US Federal Highway Administration's counterpart to IENE,  and is part of the research team on Transport and Ecology of the American Transport Research Board. Hans helped with defragmentation plans in different countries such as Portugal, Israel, Russia, and has a leading role in the Dutch mitigation program "Meerjarenprogramma Ontsnippering" (www.MJPO.nl).

  IENE Project Award 2010

  The award 2010 is given to the Mammal Research Institute and the Association for Nature “Wolf” for their cooperation in reducing the impact of transport infrastructure on landscape connectivity in Poland. The award is motivated as follows:

  “During the last decade Poland was facing an exceptional situation due to rapid growing infrastructure development. Due to their extraordinary dedication the involved persons from the Mammal Research Institute and the Association for Nature “Wolf” coped successfully with the wide range of problems that arise by developing large scale transport infrastructure in valuable natural areas and achieved sustainable solutions to prevent, minimise or mitigate detrimental impacts.”

  The IENE award recognises the accomplishments that span over initial data collection and the definition of a national network of ecological corridors, the development of recommendations on the state of art in planning and construction of mitigation measures (more than 400 wildlife crossings have been built in respone), and the implementation of ecological corridors into spatial plans of provinces. A more thorough description can be found in the poster presentation of this project:

  Poster presentation: Resolving conflicts between ecological connectivity and transportation infrastructure in Poland.