The economic development of Europe provides advantages to people, but in the same time represents a potential risk too. The main risk is to become a more artificial continent – to lose the nature and all that human being could gain from it. The ecological network Natura 2000 is the solution through which the Europe strives to preserve the nature in all its actual diversity and to promote economic activities without prejudice the biodiversity. We could say that NATURA 2000 tries to conciliate two needs of humans, both vital: the need to gain incomes and the need to preserve the nature alive, which is not an untouchable objective but it requires much equilibrium and wisdom. The present paper proposes to approach both the problems faced at the implementation of the Ecological European Network “Natura 2000” in the area of grasslands and hayfields and to offer solutions of good practices regarding the rational exploitation of the grasslands and hayfields both in protected and unprotected areas. Among the main causes which contribute to degradation of the grasslands and hayfields there are: overgrazing, non-grazing, land clearing and arson of Pinus mugo woods, the conversion of the grasslands into arable lands, changing of land usage, the absence of a coherent management and other causes. Also, a special threat is constituted by the precarious state of the local agricultural economy. The traditional agricultural non-profitable methods, the massive emigration of population out of the rural medium led to abandonment of the marginal lands and to intensification of exploitation of the lands easy of access. All the problems and their solving must be introduced within the management plans of the protected natural areas and the authorities of local public administration must respect the obligations stipulated by the law in this field. Concomitantly, the present paper proposes to approach the legal framework existing in Romania regarding the protection, rational exploitation, organization and arrangement of grasslands depending on their recovery capacity, including those located within the perimeter or in the neighborhood of a protected natural area.

grassland and hayfields; the Ecological Network "Natura 2000"; legal framework

Presentation: oral