SERVICES - Social-ecological research and technological innovations for improved integration of cultural ecosystem services in participatory planning processes

A key cultural heritage in Europe are – besides the landscapes – also flagship species, of which some such as wolf, lynx, bear or bison are starting to re-migrate or are re-introduced artificially. Nowadays, we acknowledge, that the existence of such species and their visibility is an important cultural service, contributing to nature experience and inspiration. On the other side, at least some of these flagship species are subject to biased perceptions and can even end in being experienced as disservice to attacks to livestock and even to people. We suggest that a partnership bundling diverse cultural experiences in dealing with human-wildlife interactions would add great advances to develop strategic instruments to avoid conflicts and enhance synergies. For doing so, we suggest as well that modelling approaches for prospecting the further dispersal and migration of such species, including their adaptive behaviour should be developed to map potential overlapping areas and initiate early measures to either influence the settling of such species and guide them around conflicting areas or make people prepared through improved information and other informal governance instruments.

SERVICES addresses the following challenges:

1. How to integrate species-specific behaviours in spatial planning to control habitat functions?
2. How do new modelling approaches improve the participatory planning process at the interface between the ecosystem and land system?
3. How to involve various research institutes, regional stakeholders and local inhabitants?

Cross-border cooperation among countries (e.g. Poland or Romania), which host potential donors of wildlife population are quite important for the (re-) settlement of flagship species. The main goal of SERVICES will be to strengthen the research focus as well as to publish the outcomes in a synthesis paper. Furthermore, the consortium applies for one or more international research funding programs.