The event is being organized for the 56th time.Continue reading
The Hortobágy Bird Theater will be a unique ecotourism attraction in Europe, said the State Secretary for Active Hungary at the signing of the consortium contract for the project. The ‘bird theater’ will provide a special presentation of the bird and animal life of the Hortobágy fish ponds.
Máriusz Révész said at the visitor center of the Hortobágy National Park (eastern Hungary) that the country’s first bird theater will be based on the ideas of Bence Máté, an internationally renowned Hungarian nature photographer.
The State Secretary said that HUF 65 billion (EUR 165 million) in funding is available for active ecotourism development. He praised the local government for using the HUF 4.3 billion (EUR 11 million) in funding it had applied for under the Operational Program for Regional and Local Development Plus (TOP Plus) to build a large-scale project, the Bird Theater, instead of many small facilities.
Zoltán Pajna, President of the Hajdú-Bihar County Assembly, said that the bird theater would bring nature closer to people in the form of a kind of reverse zoo:
people – not the birds – would be enclosed in a room sunk into the ground, where they could observe aquatic birds through 16-metre-wide glass, almost at the same level as the water surface, in their natural habitat, up close and personal, without disturbing the animals.
Gergely Árpád Medgyesi, director of the national park, added that
the bird theater will be built in the artificial old lakes managed by the park, which means that the World Heritage site will not be damaged.
The 2,000-hectare area, which had previously been built as a fish pond, has been reclaimed by nature, its vegetation is dense and it has become a bird paradise where more than 340 of the 430 species of birds found in Hungary have been observed. According to the nature conservationist, one of the jewels of the old lake will be the bird theater, which will expand the tourist offer of Hortobágy to a four-season destination.
Via MTI, Featured image: Facebook/Hortobágyi Nemzeti Park Igazgatóság/Péter Csobán