








From 9th to 13th September the ILÖK hosted the 49th annual conference of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (GfÖ) in the premises of the Fürstenberghaus. With 689 participants from 25 countries, the conference was one of the best attended GfÖ conferences in the past decades. In eight parallel sessions 380 talks and 180 posters were presented. According to the theme of the conference, many sessions dealt with topical environmental policy issues, such as urban air hygiene, climate change, the decline of insect populations and agricultural policy. The German-language sessions of the "Praktikertag" proved to be a demanded forum for exchange between researchers and practitioners of nature conservation and environmental protection. The conference ended with a conference dinner followed by a club night at the music club Jovel, excursions to the Emsaue and Rieselfelder Münster as well as to the ILÖK's restoration projects in limestone quarries of the Teutoburg Forest and peat extraction sites near Vechta.
This year, the ILÖK celebrates its 25th anniversary. On this occasion the institute had invited on 10.09.2019 in the context of the annual conference of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (GfÖ) in Münster to a small celebration, attended by more than 80 former and active institute members. Also present were the two founding fathers of the Institute, Prof. Dr. Karl-Friedrich Schreiber and Prof. Dr. Friedrich-Karl Holtmeier, whose untiring efforts over many years have largely led to the founding of the Institute. After greetings of the dean of the department Prof. Dr. Harald Strauss and of the former AStA chairman and ILÖK graduate Dr. Josef Tumbrinck (today sub-department head nature conservation in the BMU), the managing director of the institute Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Norbert Hölzel gave a brief overview of the development of the Institute since its foundation [PDF download] [non-accessible] [de] in 1994. The evening ended with a lively exchange and a friendly get-together of the guests.