ABSTRACT
Different sources indicate that the increasing preference for living in a greener environment, away from crowded conurbations, is in line with the recent population movement towards many rural areas in Europe (e.g. de Bakker, 1989; Lewis, 1992; Camarero, 1993; van Dam, 1996; Champion et al., 1998; van der Aa and Huigen, 2000; van Dam et al., 2002). The rural re-population process, which results from an urban-to-rural population movement, is especially interesting in the context of integration of functions in rural areas. Another change making integration of functions in rural areas important is the growing awareness that conservation management cannot work effectively if areas are set aside for protection, whilst the economic, social and cultural wellbeing of local populations is ignored (e.g. Sadler, 1989; Stankey, 1989; Rao and Geisler, 1990; Zube and Busch, 1990; Fletcher, 1990; Wells et al., 1992). This is because in time, more evidence has emerged to show that ignoring the needs of local people when establishing and managing protected areas has caused major threats to the natural environments under protection. As a result, in the last two decades, there has been an increased emphasis on designing methods to combine the conservation and restoration of nature and landscape with local cultural and economic interests. Rural development should be stimulated through the combined mobilization of different local resources. Since the 1980s integrated approaches to nature conservation have also been promoted by several international organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU). Now organizations such as the UN, IUCN, Council of Europe and the European Commission connect the integration of conservation and rural development to the concept of sustainability (see e.g. Lucas, 1992; 6th Environment Action Programme, the Community Biodiversity Strategy and Council of Europe’s Pan-European Biological and Landscape Diversity Strategy). This study starts from the acknowledgement that protected natural territories are an important endogenous quality of rural areas (see e.g. Harper, 1993; Hoggart et al., 1995) and can have an important function in attracting new activities and therefore in integrating the development of these places. Therefore, the main aim is to gain insight into the relationship between protected natural areas and residential activities. Existing statistical and new empirical data have been collected in five European case study areas to answer the following questions:
1 Do protected natural areas attract new residents? 2 What importance does the presence of a protected natural area play in the
decision to make a residential move? 3 How does the presence of a protected natural area contribute to the satisfac-
tion with the residential environment and therefore to the quality of life of rural places?
