MANAGEMENT

Among main management activities, such actions as reed cutting, restoration and maintenance of coastal and shore meadows and protection of forests should be mentioned as most significant.

We have been cutting the reed in lake since 2002 thus eliminating large stands of reed and improving breeding habitat for birds. Monitoring provides us with figures showing that on some of the islands the breeding success of ducks has increased from 0% in 2002 to 85% in 2003.

First project meadow was restored in 2002, followed by the second meadow in 2003 and others in 2004; cattle are already grazing on 3 meadows. The effectiveness of maintenance of meadows by grazing is proving to be very high - it can be explicitly seen on the first meadow, where large stands of reed have been eliminated and waders and geese are returning to meadows for resting, breeding and feeding. Cattle and horse grazing have raised high interest in public and media, especially our idea to bring Latvian native breed “Latvian Blue cow” to the area. Engure project is the first project in Latvia, introducing the system of breeding meat cattle for nature conservation purposes, combined with support to farmers. Due to the fact that there was no experience of this kind of activities in Latvia, it was hard to foresee fully the effects of different activities planned in the project. At the moment when project is finished we can with full confidence say that grazing management was the right solution for Engure to restore and maintain the habitats and to involve local community in nature conservation.

Thus, Engure project has been playing major role in developing semi-natural grazing approach in protected areas.