Angling Along the Danube: Danube Fishing Routes

One of the main territorial challenges in tourism sector of the CBC Ro-Bg area is its unevenly distribution and underdevelopment. The Danube-centered sustainable tourism is still emerging and less popular than the Black Sea and the advantages for tourist development of the rich natural heritage are less known both at national and international level. The project aims to improve the sustainable use of natural heritage and resources through development of common tourism products based on recreational fishing. This will be achieved via raising awareness within the CBC Ro-Bg area of the social and economic benefits of recreational fishing tourism and the development and promotion of two new tourist products based on natural recourses. The project envisage the development of two integrate tourist products: „Danube fishing routes“ – an interactive GIS based tourist routes map, which can be used to assist the anglers from the CBC region to find the best fishing and boating spots in the CBC Ro-Bg area “Angling along the Danube” annual fishing festival - a specially organized event that aims to increase tourists by offering them opportunity to participate and have good time while engaged in their hobby activities – angling. The project implementation will: -increase participation in recreational angling and boating, as at the same time ensures protecting and restoring the region’s aquatic natural resources; -implement an informed, consensus-based joint strategy that will increase participation in recreational angling and boating and thereby increase public awareness and appreciation of the need to protect, conserve and restore this region’s aquatic natural resources; -entice the target audience to spend more time on the water boating and fishing, and conserving the region’s aquatic resources; -work to increase participation through an integrated cross-border marketing campaign. How is this possible? Usually the fishermen tourists/anglers are unaware of all restrictions and legal conditions that apply to recreational fishing. The Danube fishing routes platform will promote the safe and legal angling. The project also includes the development of a joint strategy for awareness raising of the social and economic benefits of recreational fishing tourism within the cross-border Bulgarian-Romanian region which aims to offer some guidance to all angling bodies, recreational fishers, businesses that rely on recreational fishers in the hope that, knowing their commitment to biodiversity and conservation, they will use it in their fishing activities and thus contribute to the noble task of preserving our ecosystems free and intact as far as possible from the impacts of human activity. The recreational fisheries sector in Europe benefits people as a resource for food, and through providing many cultural ecosystem services, including recreation, education, social and aesthetic pleasures, as well as contributing to provisioning services and motivating maintenance of the supporting and regulating services of ecosystems. Sustainably managed recreational fishing also can contribute to the conservation of biodiversity, the preservation of rural lifestyles and local economies. In this context recreational fishing can provide strong incentives for conservation through use of biodiversity. The project will be implemented in a way that will do much to promote the conservation of fish and their habitats, as well as to develop and promote best practices. Since recreational fishers are numerous in most countries, they provide an important societal sensitivity to issues regarding the health of freshwater ecosystems which is essential for an ecosystem approach to fisheries management and sustainability. Estimated total project budget: € 464 728.90. Activities: Project management, monitoring and evaluation; Strategy development and awareness raising; Development of joint tourist product – „Danube fishing routes“ - Mapping of the best/most popular fishing and boating spots in the CB area and development of an interactive GIS based platform and a mobile application; Development of a joint tourist product – „Angling Along the Danube“– annual fishing festival. Awareness raising campaign; Project communication. The project will introduce an innovative solution as it envisage the development of the mobile application that will allow the GIS platform to “live” through its users who will communicate with each other and find the best way to spend their spare time and implement their favorite hobby. The festival will be organized based on the principles for development of innovative cultural events and mainly: will involve new problematics that has not yet been covered; will target a specific type of public – anglers, and will aim to change the position of recipients from passive viewers to active accomplices in the event; will use innovative promotional channels; and will try to involve new locations and spaces. The aim is to organize it annually, giving the opportunity of active visitors to choose the spot – different each year. The project contributes to the Programme’s output indicators because: It will increase the number joint strategies and management plans that develop and promote natural heritage by 2, namely: developed 1 (one) joint strategy for awareness raising of the social and economic benefits of recreational fishing within the cross-border Bulgarian-Romanian region and developed 1 (one) marketing strategy and a management plan for the new joint tourist products; It will increase the number of common tourism products and services based on the sustainable joint utilisation of the natural heritage as it envisage: to developed 2 (two) joint tourist product – „Danube fishing routes“ and „Angling along the Danube festival“. The project will also raise awareness on social and economic benefits of recreational fishing within the cross-border Bulgarian-Romanian region and promote the new joint tourist products. The successful project implementation will contribute to increasing the number of tourist overnights in the CBC region. The CB cooperation is needed as project objectives cannot be efficiently reached acting only on national, regional or local level. The target area, covered by the project, practically includes the entire CBC region. The project needs the cooperation of both Ro and Bg partners in order to best develop the envisaged outputs and best present them to the relevant public. The project partners assume that the target area of the project is one integrated region with a joint vision for sustainable growth and prosperity, demanding joint solutions to tackle similar problems, existing on both sides of the river.

The project implementation was finalized in January 2020. The project launched with a press conferences held in Ruse and in Slatina. LB developed a joint strategy for awareness raising of the social and economic benefits of recreational fishing tourism within the cross-border Bulgarian-Romanian region. B2 was responsible for the development of a Common Marketing Strategy together with the related implementation and financial plan. The best/most popular fishing and boating spots in the CB area (132 in total) were mapped out by both beneficiaries. They are available at the interactive GIS based-platform "Danube fishing routes"- https://www.fishmap.online/. The first edition of the “Angling along the Danube” annual fishing festival was organized between 07-08 September 2019, in Dobrosloveni, Olt and 21-22 September 2019 in Lipnik, Ruse. More information on the fishing festivals can be accesed here: http://www.fishingfestival.eu/. 15 awareness raising and promotional events have been organized in the eligible area: 8 events in Bulgaria in the period 10-31.10.2019 and 7 events in Romania in the period 23.04-29.08.2019.

The project envisage the development of 2 (two) joint tourist products that are likely to attract a large number of visitors (fishermen/tourists) to the target CBC area. The envisaged number of tourist overnights within the CBC region is at least 6000. The project deliverables are addressing a big target group and will attract visitors not only from the CB area but the entire territories of the two countries. It is also likely to attract international interest as the role of recreational fishing as a leisure time spending is growing within the EU. For example, only for Bulgaria, since January 2017 there are more than 42 000 angling fishing licenses (tickets) issued by the Executive Agency of Fisheries and Aquaculture (EAFA), 19 000 only in April. There will also be a large awareness raising campaign aiming to popularize social and economic benefits of recreational fishing within the cross-border Bulgarian-Romanian region and promote the new joint tourist products. This will contribute to reaching a wider range of the target groups and attract more tourists to use the newly developed tourist products. The popularity of the common tourist products will be further increased through the implementation of a joint marketing strategy and will achieve sustainability through application of e common management plan.