Today, Minister of Spatial Planning Claude Turmes visited the Minett UNESCO Biosphere, a label of the Pro-Sud syndicate of municipalities, partly financed by an agreement with the Département de l’aménagement du territoire (DATer).

At the beginning of his visit, the MUB managers gave the Minister an overview of the recent and future projects of the Minett UNESCO Biosphere, an initiative that counted on the support of DATer from the start. These included the BioBlitz, which recently took place on the territory of the Pro-Sud communes, the Biodiversity Days and the launch of a proactive communication on the importance of the biosphere reserve for the 11 communes of southern Luxembourg and the inhabitants of Minett.

Afterwards, the big summer project in the biosphere: the geopoetic discovery trip of the Italian writer, Davide S. Sapienza, and the Luxemburgish geologist, Robert Weis, and other projects planned for the autumn were presented to the Minister.

Following a short refreshment, the Minister was taken on a guided tour of one of the core areas of the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Pol Zimmermann, head of the Ellergronn Nature and Forest Centre, explained to Claude Turmes the importance of the former open-cast mines in southern Luxembourg for the development and conservation of biodiversity in the region. It is in fact this natural wealth of biodiversity that prompted UNESCO to classify the Minett as the 714th ‘UNESCO Man and Biosphere’ biosphere reserve last autumn.