SUSTAINABLE RURAL DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN AGRICULTURE AND NATURE CONSERVATION

Abstract

In Hungary 5.8 million hectares is and approximately 1 million hectares is grassland. In Hungary 256 674 hectares are under nature protection. In the conservation of thesearea the grazing animal husbandry has a determinative role. Highly important to harmonise aims and tasks of agriculture and nature conservation in these areas. Overgrazed parts have already been transformed into degraded ruderal areas and grasslands became even poorer in species. The composition of dominant species in grasslands further away from the summer lodging has not changed significantly. Values of meadows and pastures (natural conservation, lawn farming and forage doctrine) highly depends which is determined by the proportion of useful, less useful and other races. For the accurate knowledge of the species composition of the lawns number of authors justifies the importance of the grazing.

Coenological relevés were already prepared in 1997 on the sandy pastures of Hungary which we repeated in 2005 and 2012. The examinations primarily examined that whether any changes happened in vegetation during test period or not. Our aim was to determine: if any changes happened, what kind of direction did these modify the face of the original vegetation;  how did it influence the combination of species and how they changed the dominance relations in the associations. Considerable deterioration between the examinations on the areas cannot be experienced under the examined time. Nevertheless, choosing the appropriate treatment and the correct size of grazing livestock, preservation of the natural conditions is possible on both sites.