European ecological networks and greenways

In the context of European integration, networks are becoming increasingly important in both social and ecological sense. Since the beginning of the 1990s, societal and scientific exchanges are being restructured as the conceptual approaches towards new nature conservation strategies have been renewed. Within the framework of nature conservation, the notion of an ecological network has become increasingly important. Throughout Europe, regional and national approaches are in different phases of development, which are all based on recent landscape ecological principles. Ecological networks are interpreted in a variety of ways depending on different historical roots of nature conservation, planning and scientific traditions, different geographical and administrative levels, different land uses, and in the end the political decision-making is dependent on actors with different land use interests. This complex interaction between cultural and natural features results in quite different ways for the elaboration of ecological networks and greenways.