photo by Elitsa Grancharova
On September 12 at a ceremony in the Doctors garden in Sofia the Annual Biodiversity Awards were presented. The jurys members were Bulgarian former tennis player and active environmentalist Magdalena Maleeva, PricewaterhouseCoopers director Ivailo Vutev, Gerasim Gerasimov from the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation and the Bulgarian media expert Georgi Lozanov.
The nominations were in four categories. The award for Campaign 2007 was given to the Strandzha Natural Park campaign because it is the initiative that included most citizens from all ages, NGOs, institutions and media. The Bulgarian Biodiversity Foundation, which organised the awards, will celebrate the success of Strandzha campaign with a party in October 2007.
Albena Pino from Bulgarian language daily Dnevnik was awarded for the best journalism story. During the last year she has been writing about the problems of the environmental network Natura 2000 in Bulgaria. She however did not accept the cheque of 500 leva awarded to her and gave it to the Strandzha party. Special awards received Dnevnik and Capital for being engaged and competent on environmental topics. They received the special award photos from the Green Belt region.
Elitsa Grancharova from The Sofia Echo was also nominated in this category for her series of articles on Natura 2000.
In the category Best Management of Protected Area the winner became the Strandzha NP administration for their fight to keep the parks protected area statute. The special award in this category was given to Vassil Petrov, who is the former director of Rila National Park, for defending the state and societys interests by protecting the biggest Bulgarian national park. His award is participation in the exchange travel to Lonsco Pole Nature Park in Croatia.
In the category Donor for the Biodiversity the award was not given. The nominees are the Netherlands Governments MATRA grants, Frankfurter Zoology Association, the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation, Stenata shop and Gorichka.bg, bTV, Toyota and the American College. They traditionally support environmental protection projects, and Stenata shop gives five per cent of the value of some of their sold articles for preserving the nature.
The winner in the category Municipalities became Strumiani municipality. It is involved in many projects for popularisation and preservation of biodiversity and especially for decreasing conflicts between people and predatory animals.
All those awarded received the symbolical Green Belt and a cheque for 500 leva. The awards were financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation and two of the cheques were provided by WWF Bulgaria and Ecology&Business magazine.
