Wetlands in all their variety are among the most significant and important natural phenomena of the Carpathian mountain region and its adjacent basins and lowlands, receiving the water flowing from the mountains – the biggest, the longest and the most rugged mountain range of Europe. This region reaches the area of eight states – the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania and Serbia. Its nature values and rarities were summarised in various papers and publications, however, none of these has dealt with especially rich and varied world of cultural expressions of these nations towards the water, rivers, brooks, springs, waterfalls, lakes, peatbogs, marshes, wet grasslands, meadows or woodlands. Thanks to the Ramsar Convention Secretariat’s offer to carry out a survey of its wetlands’ cultural values, it was possible to search out this relatively unexplored field within the project Ramsar Culture Network Development in the Carpathian Region, based on the MAVA Foundation funded project entitled ‘Conservation of the natural and cultural heritage in wetlands: Global leadership for an integrated approach through the Ramsar Convention’, co-financed by partners of the Carpathian Wetland Initiative. The aim was to identify, document and make available information about notable cultural values and practices associated with wetlands in the Carpathian countries. Information collected will support both the conservation of cultural heritage and the Ramsar Convention’s aim of integrating cultural aspects in the management of Ramsar sites and other wetlands. In a relatively short time that was available, we managed to obtain the first initial background information as well as motivation and inspiration for future more profound study of this topic, which would definitely deserve its own book publication.
Wetland cultural values of the Carpathians and adjacent areas of the Danube basin were mostly identified in protected areas of national importance, as well as in areas of international importance (Ramsar Sites). Using a questionnaire elaborated based on the Ramsar Guidance on Rapid Cultural Inventories for Wetlands2 and distributed to partners of the Carpathian Wetland Initiative, and by studying other literature and internet sources, we have gathered a primary information on this topic from the area of Slovakia and Ukraine, partly from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Serbia.
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