LIFE AMooRe — Austrian Moor Restoration Strategy (Austria)

LIFE AMooRe (Austrian Moor Restoration) is a ten-year (2024-2033), EUR 44.23M integrated LIFE project, 60% EU co-financed, bringing together all nine Austrian federal states and the Federal Ministries for Agriculture (BML) and Climate Action (BMK) to implement the national Austrian Mire Strategy 2030+. It aims to restore ecological function on roughly 1,400 ha of degraded mire (about 1,165 ha of which are priority habitat) in cooperation with landowners, creating conditions for 13 habitat types and 37 species of conservation concern.

A core scientific component, led by the University of Vienna's Geoecology working group with Kiel University support, is to derive Austria-specific greenhouse-gas emission factors (CO2, CH4, N2O) for different peatland types — data Austria currently lacks and needs to report restoration impact under EU climate accounting rules. Eddy-covariance and chamber-based gas-flux measurements began at the Wörschacher and Irdninger Moor (Ennstal, Styria) pilot sites in January 2025.

Because the project only started full-scale implementation in 2024 and its flagship emission-factor measurements began in 2025, no restoration-area or emission-reduction results have yet been published; its evidentiary strength currently lies in its governance design (nine-state, two-ministry, EU-co-financed structure) and scientific rigour rather than demonstrated outcomes. C-NAPSE scores it accordingly as an early-stage but well-governed programme, to be re-evaluated as monitoring data are published.

Read the full analysis: https://geography.univie.ac.at/en/working-groups/geoecology/research/ongoing-projects/life-amoore-austrian-moor-restoration/