The biennial prize recognises outstanding management of Natura 2000 sites. Natura 2000 glass award depicting blue birds, green motifs and the EU stars logo. The European Commission has announced the winners of the 2024 Natura 2000 Award at Green Week in Brussels on Thursday.

The biennial Award, this year celebrating its tenth anniversary, recognises outstanding management of Natura 2000 sites and showcases the network’s added value of conserving nature for local communities and economies across the EU.

With over 3,500 votes, the Polish initiative to protect the black stork, submitted by the Forest Experimental Station in Rogów, won the hard-fought public vote and received the Citizens’ Award. Followed closely in second place was the Belgian Wolf Fencing Team, for promoting peaceful coexistence with wolves. The Spanish 'Nature’s guardians: enhancing effectiveness and efficiency of response to environmental crime’ came in third. In the regular competition, winners were selected by a high-level jury of representatives from the Commission, Council, Committee of the Regions, NGO community and the users and landowners associations.

The Estonian Fund for Nature received the Conservation on Land Award with their initiative to restore 8,000 hectare of mire habitats, whereas the Marine Conservation prize went to Portuguese NGO Ocean Alive, for restoring and protecting ‘blue forests’ (seagrass meadows). 

The Wild Atlantic Nature project convinced the jury with their ’Ground-breaking agri-environment payment scheme for farmers in Natura 2000 areas in Ireland’ (Working together for Nature category), as did the Spanish-French initiative ‘Grazing to preserve Natura 2000 habitats and species in the Pyrenees’ led by the HAZI Foundation (Cross-Border Cooperation category).

The Italian Artetica Cultural Association took home the Communication prize with their community engagement and citizen science initiative ‘From the woods to the web and back’.