European Centre for Nature Conservation

European Centre for Nature Conservation (ECNC) is an independent European biodiversity expertise centre for sustainable development, based on a foundation structure. ECNC’s stated mission is a beautiful Europe based on a rich biodiversity, healthy ecosystems and sustainable development. The organization promotes an integrated approach for both land and sea and stimulates interaction between science, society and policy.

In 1993 the European Centre for Nature Conservation was officially launched at the conference ‘Conserving Europe’s Natural Heritage – towards a European Ecological Network’ held in Maastricht, Netherlands. 267 Participants from 31 European States and 26 international organizations discussed the decline in Europe's biological and landscape diversity, primarily loss and fragmentation of habitats and deterioration of environmental quality, exacerbated by climate change.

HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands opened the conference and the State Secretary for Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality of the Netherlands, Mr. J. Dzsingisz Gabor, formally announced ECNC’s establishment: “For European cooperation, the exchange of information and expertise is crucial. There are still many gaps to be bridged in connecting the different fragments of information and expertise. There are many networks to be built or strengthened in Europe. In order to meet this requirement, a private foundation and an international network of well-established institutes have taken the initiative to set up the European Centre for Nature Conservation (ECNC) in Tilburg, the Netherlands.”

ECNC projects are clustered in six thematic programmes, which:

ECNC led the drafting group for the Pan-European Biological and Landscape Diversity Strategy (PEBLDS). The PEBLDS (1994) was the European response to support the implementation of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The Strategy was proposed in the afore mentioned Maastricht Declaration Conserving Europe's Natural Heritage and focuses on stopping and reversing the degradation of biological and landscape diversity values in Europe.