Estonian Seminatural Community Conservation Association mission is to guarantee the maintenance of Estonian semi-natural communities. Semi-natural communities are traditional agricultural landscapes that include wooded meadows, alvars, floodplain meadows, coastal meadows, but also other meadows and pastures with minimal human acitivity.
Our goal is semi-natural communities
protection and awareness raising
The member of ESCCA can be everyone, who wishes to support the conservation of Estonian semi-natural communities. There are students, scientists, farmers, nature conservationists, proprietors and other representatives of different fields of life among the members of ESCCA. The main activities of ESCCA can be divided broadly as following: collecting information concerning semi-natural communities, organising the protection and maintenance of those communities, and thirdly, introducing semi-natural communities to the larger audience.
Semi-natural communities
Semi-natural communities are traditional agricultural landscapes where human influence has been limited to mowing and grazing.
Alvars
Alvars can most simply be described as limestone-rich meadows with shallow soil, which generally lack trees and bushes.
Wooded meadows
Wooded meadows are one of the oldest ecosystems in the forest zone that have evolved through interactions between man and nature.
Floodplain meadow
Floodplain meadows are periodically flooded semi-natural communities situated on the banks of rivers (or lakes).
Rannaniidud
Botanically the name coastal meadows is given to meadows that are situated on the seashore and are to a lesser or greater extent under the influence of saline seawater.
The preservation of
traditional village culture
The ESCCA was called into being due to the fact that the area of semi-natural communities has become marginal during the 20th century, consequently, the further existence of semi-natural communities as well as of species adapted to those conditions has become questionable. Through the maintenance of traditional rural landscapes ESCCA supports also the preservation of traditional village culture.
