Habitat Restoration Program in Hortobágy National Park

The Nine-arched Bridge, a symbol of the Hortobágy National Park

The Hungarian National Bank (MNB) will implement a habitat restoration project on 36 hectares in Hortobágy National Park in cooperation with WWF Hungary to offset its carbon footprint in 2024, the bank announced on its website.

The project will plant native forests, establish a field protection tree line, and restore species-rich sand grassland, preserving biodiversity and mitigating the effects of climate change. The move is part of the Green Program, launched in 2019, through which the MNB aims to reduce emissions from its operational activities by 75 percent over six years.

The bank has declared in its Environmental Strategy 2020-2022, that its operations will become fully carbon neutral. To this end, it will neutralize carbon emissions from its operations through ecological offset programs in partnership with environmental non-profit organization WWF Hungary.

Hortobágy in the summer. Photo: Wikipedia

This year, to offset its annual carbon footprint, the central bank will again implement a habitat restoration program, identified by WWF, this time in Hortobágy National Park, in the Kállósemjén area.

The nearly 36-hectare area, currently mainly used as arable land, will be restored to a species-rich sandy grassland, using native grass seed mixtures.

The aim is also to create a native, semi-natural woodland and a field protection tree line. The works will be complemented by targeted planting of protected plant species in the area, thereby increasing biodiversity.

Fact

The nearly 75,000-hectare area of the Hortobágy National Park is located on the Great Hungarian Plain in eastern Hungary. The so-called Hortobágy Puszta, part of the national park, is a cultural landscape that consists of a vast area of plains and wetlands. The landscape has been listed as a World Heritage Site since 1999. The most famous species of Hortobágy are the Hungarian Grey cattle, Racka sheep, the Mangalica pig and the Nonius horse. The area’s colorful bird life is also unique, with 342 bird species registered so far.

The Hortobágy Puszta is an exceptional example of a cultural landscape constituted by a pastoral society. Photo: Pixabay

In previous years, the central bank has implemented habitat restoration programs in the areas of Geszt (southeast) and Drávaszentes (southwest).

The MNB’s environmental footprint has been decreasing in recent years, in line with its Green Program. As part of its 2020-2022 environmental strategy, the central bank aimed to reduce its operational carbon footprint by 30 percent, exceeding it by the end of 2022, when its carbon footprint was reduced by almost 60 percent. By the end of 2023, the per capita carbon footprint was more than 67 percent lower than in the base year 2019. Their target for the period 2023-2025, is to reduce the carbon footprint by 75 percent.

Magnificent Cranes Flock to the Hortobágy Plains