Schutzgebiete als innovative Lern- und Erfahrungsräume

Nature Reserves as Innovative Spaces for Learning and Experiencing. Forays through practice
This article invites the reader to foray through nature reserves in Austria, the Czech Republic and Georgia, which are increasingly perceived as spaces for learning, experiencing and experimenting and exploited as such. Organised for schoolchildren, young people and adults, the educational offerings in these nature reserves deal with the topics of natural science, environmental education and sustainability and facilitate active, emotional learning. Practice-based and often unusual approaches to communicating ideas are employed and the nature reserves are perceived as providers, producers and users of sustainable knowledge. The article presents and reflects on a cooperation project in the Nockberge Biosphere Reserve, the nature reserve workshops (Naturparkwerkstätte) in the six nature reserves in Burgenland, the “Hirschbirn hirsch‘n” path in Pöllauer Tal Nature Reserve, a cooperation project in Tusheti National Park in Georgia, the exchange of knowledge between a Czech national park and an Austrian biosphere reserve and the new “univerzoom” educational exhibition at the park centre in Hohe Tauern National Park in Carinthia. All these projects have one thing in common: they generate, preserve and impart knowledge. (Ed.)