Interview Zoltan Kun

What was your intention for using mountain.TRIP?

First of all I wanted to get in touch with people who are active on mountain related issues with special interest in biodiversity. So I joined the biodiversity group on MountainTRIP. My main interest is to liaise with researchers, because of two main reasons: collecting research evidences of biodiversity protection in mountains (special interest in wilderness) and generating potential new research ideas. These would be very beneficial for PAN Parks Foundation My second intention was to see how on online community works. Can we actually mobilise researchers to share ideas and experiences. I wanted to know that because PAN Parks Foundation also considers starting an online community.

If you would need to summarize in three sentences the opportunities mountain.TRIP offers you, what would you say?

1. Liaise with people with similar interest, 2. Get in touch with researchers in order to strengthen our own research programme, 3 Receive new information regarding research programmes in mountain areas.

PanParks works for the protection of wilderness in Europe; also in mountain areas of course– how do you think mountain.TRIP can support you in fulfilling your mission?

As I said earlier, Mountain TRIP can help to strengthen our own research agenda through channelling existing research evidences towards PAN Parks, get in touch with the academic sector and so generate new research ideas. One of our future activities will be to collect evidences about the benefits of wilderness for biodiversity, society at large and also economically. It might sound as a contradiction, but we believe wilderness delivers not only ecological, but also economic benefits for instance through climate change mitigation or controlling floods.

What kind of functions of the mountain.TRIP portal did you use already (news, links, discussion groups, etc) and what is your opinion on their functionality?

I am particularly interested in the Biodiversity, Conservation and Tourism group. I always check its announcements. I replied on discussion (it is a bit disappointing seeing the group not too active) and started discussion on my own.

Thanks for the interview!