« Minett UNESCO Biosphere » features cuestas and a variety of landscapes and ecosystems; orchards, calcareous grasslands, lowland hay meadows, alluvial and ravine forests and wet Calthion meadows are home to fauna and flora that need to be preserved.

Mines and their man-made terraced landscapes are a prominent feature of the biosphere. Before they were sites of intense industrial activity. Today, they show that the impact people have on nature can also be positive. When the mines were shut down, a special type of flora and fauna started to develop there, including orchids, butterflies, bats, amphibians, lizards, reptiles and birds. This environment is surrounded by human activity which needs to be made more sustainable without expanding it in order to preserve these natural areas.

Core areas

These areas are designed to preserve important ecological features and functions and to restrict activities to research and monitoring. They only include former open-pit mining sites classified as nature reserves or NATURA 2000 zones. Often, the sites are close to urban areas. This is a sign of their industrial past; people built as close as possible to the mines.

Transition area:

The remaining surfaces comprise this area, which is the site of human activity. Characterised by different uses of the land, this is where people live and work.

Buffer zones

The activities in these areas must not disturb the protected zones. Their role is to minimise the negative effects of human activities on the core areas. The 26 buffer zones of our biosphere comprise the nature reserves and NATURA 2000 zones that do not feature former open-pit mines.