Finally, we can attend conferences :) The week in a nutshell: conferences on conservation biology, landscape ecology and archaeology

After three years, it was a real pleasure to finally attend conferences in person and to meet with colleagues who we haven't met for a long time. The last part of August was especially intensive and exciting as we attended/will attend in total four conferences :) And now we are very much looking forward to the two forthcoming conferences in Spain in September.

In a chronological order, we attended/will attend the following meetings in the past days

- European Congress for Conservation Biology, Prague: the biggest conference of the European conservation biologist community, with great talks, great symposia and of course great other programs. Balázs Deák was a member of the scientific committee and he also organized a thematic symposium entitled 'Synergy between nature and culture: the role of historical and sacred natural sites in biodiversity conservation'. This gap-filling symposium was very interesting and gave a great overview on this very important but less known topic. Besides, members of our group participated in the conference with oral presentations and speed presentations.

- Hungarian Conservation Biology Conference, Pécs: right after the European conference, we went to the Hungarian one, which had also great talks, and great programs. With Katalin Török we organized a roundtable discussion entitled 'From where to where we transfer propagules in grassland restoration?'. We had a very lively discussion about this controversiary topic. Besides, our group participated at the conference with several posters and the talk of Katalin Lukács.

- Hungarian Conference on Landscape Ecology, Nádudvar: Parallel with the above two conferences, there was another interesting Hungarian conference, on which Sándor Borza from our group participated with a presentation and a poster.

- Annual Meeting of the European Archaeological Association, Budapest: the largest European archaeological conference is also running this week. From our group, Balázs Deák and Ádám Bede will participate with one presentation and one poster each, in a section dedicated to kurgans.

Finally, some photos about our adventures in Prague :)

The symposium organized by Balázs about the synergies between nature conservation and culture.

The botanical garden of the Charles University is a hidden gem, with a very interesting exhibition of wetland and aquatic species.

We visited the famous U Fleku inn :)

In Prague, there are so many invasive nutrias. Once on an island of the Vltava river, we so as many as thirty individuals! They are not afraid at all from the tourists.

We visited the Lednice-Valtice UNESCO site both on the journey to and back from Prague. This is a great place and definitely worth a visit. Not only because the wonderful buildings and the spectacular and huge hedges, but also because there are wonderful natural habitats there, including meadows with large old trees and nice lakeshore vegetation.

Group photo at the ECCB conference :)