Resolution, made on 6 September 2006 during the international conference
"Soil-Bioengineering: Ecological Restoration with Native Plant and Seed Material", at the Research and Education Centre Raumberg-Gumpenstein, A-8952 Irdning, Austria

The participants of the international conference of the European Federation for soil-bio-engineering and the INTERREG IIIB CADSES project "SURE" demand, under the aspect of sustainability, economic efficiency and landscape aesthetics in the sphere of erosion protection and revegetation, task-oriented solutions adapted to site and region. We plead, on the basis of latest results in soil-bioengineering, for the use of plant species that have not been changed by breeding and are of regional origin.
Plants that are of regionally distinctive origins from the wild show the following advantages compared with varieties or alien species and genotypes:
successful and enduring effect with an optimal adaptation to the ecosystem
better adaptation to extreme sites and regional climatic and geological distinctions
only possibility to actively develop plant communities typical for the specific landscape
better and sustainable integration into the natural environment and landscape
better cost-benefit ratio and higher economic efficiency
In addition to these advantages, the use of regionally distinctive plants is compliant with the demands of the Convention on Biological Diversity of Rio de Janeiro 1992 for the conservation of biological diversity.
To make use of these advantages, there has to be laid out the legal basis for trading and introduction of plant- and seed material unchanged by breeders into nature. All constraints for the marketing of "preservation seed" (wild plants) in relation to their propagation, marketing and release, which should be valid after the decision on the draft of the directive on preservation seed mixtures by the EU-Commission (e.g. restriction on volume) are counter-productive for near-natural protection measures and therefore no such restrictions should be introduced. This also affects the decision concerning the obligation to provide evidence about the danger of genetical impoverishment of species, to be allowed to propagate "preservation seed" of those species and to make them available.
Regarding the allocation of contracts in practice a legal basis has to be created, both at an European (EU) as well as at a regional level, so that it is possible to realise and control the targets of the Rio Convention in the sphere of seed- and plant production, and their trade and use.
permanent board seed- and plant material of the EU Commission, working paper Sanca-2635-05, 5 April 2006