Private Claims on Nature Domains : whether Privatisation of Hungarian Land Affects Ecological Networks

In the Central-European countries, a transformation from command-economy to market-economy is taking place. Redistribution of rights over land is one aspect of transformation, and a key process particularly in rural areas. Changing property and use rights means changing patterns of land use. In theory, ecological structures and conservation areas that existed before 1990 in cases may be converted into other types of land use. Cadastral maps and aerial photographs are analysed for two case-study areas in Hungary, providing a long-term assessment on land use changes and their implications for ecological values. For these cases, the loss of natural landscape elements has been small, whereas a considerable length of dirt roads and parcel boundaries was added. Moreover, the negative ecological impact of socialist agriculture was far greater than the recent privatisation. The typical nature of the Hungarian privatisation system and the national nature conservation policy have played an important role in preventing large-scale conversion of nature into farmland.