Winners of the EUROPARC Scholarship for Young Professionals

Meet the two winners of the EUROPARC Scholarship for Young Professionals 2025 – 2026.

Winners of the EUROPARC Scholarship for Young Professionals

EUROPARC strongly believes that investing in capacity building for young professionals is vital for the long term success of Europe’s Protected Areas. Like everything else, the future of Protected Areas relies on the young generation taking an active and informed role. The EUROPARC Federation, with support from the EU LIFE Programme, is awarding two Scholarship Awards to promising young conservationists, who are committed to working for the benefit of Protected Areas. The aim of the scholarships is to enhance international cooperation and to advance the quality, innovation and European dimension of Protected Area management.

The Scholarship includes a travel stipendium to visit protected areas in another country in 2026 and to delve into a topic of interest, sharing the outcomes of their learnings with the EUROPARC network at the end of next year.

The winners, Eudald Vicens Roig and Irene Mineo were invited to receive their awards at the EUROPARC Conference 2025 in Lithuania. Irene was not able to join in person and instead sent a video message for the EUROPARC members which can be seen below.

Eudald Vicens Roig

Eudald is a conservation technician at La Sorellona, an environmental consultancy based in Girona, Spain. He works on urban nature restoration projects under the EU-funded Riunatur and GiroNat initiatives, involving biodiversity monitoring, habitat restoration, and nature-based solutions in urban water systems. He also leads participatory workshops on climate adaptation and drought resilience. La Sorellona manages visitor and education services at Cap de Creus and Aiguamolls de l’Empordà Natural Parks and contributes to the LIFE Rescue Alpyr project in Alt Pirineu Natural Park, all members of EUROPARC (Generalitat de Catalunya).

His area of interest for his study visits is rewilding principles of using wild herbivores in both the Alto Tajo Natural Park (Spain) and Zuid-Kennemerland National Park (The Netherlands).

Irene Mineo

Irene is a coordinator of the Scottish Marine Environmental Enhancement Fund at Nature Scot. She is responsible for managing and developing the SMEEF programme, supporting the funding and delivery of marine restoration projects across Scotland. Her activities include stakeholder engagement, coordinating grant calls, assessing project proposals, facilitating partnerships, and promoting best practices in marine enhancement and nature-based solutions. The role also involves strategic planning, communications, and contributing to national policy objectives on marine conservation and biodiversity.

The goal of her study visits is to explore and compare practical approaches to seagrass restoration and conservation in Scotland and Italy, with a focus on how community engagement, policy, and scientific methods are integrated into protected area management. By learning from different cultural and ecological contexts, she aims to identify transferable strategies that can enhance marine restoration efforts, strengthen partnerships, and support biodiversity and climate resilience in coastal ecosystems. For this she plans to visit a local seagrass restoration project in Scotland and visit Rome to learn from ISPRA and FUGRO about their efforts along the Italian coastline.

To follow both of these young professionals on their study trips, stay tuned to EUROPARC newsletters, news and social media. If you are interested in youth empowerment projects for young professionals and practitioners, consider following the EUROPARC Youth Instagram @europarc.youth which will feature the travels of both scholarship winners.

This programme has been supported financially in the framework of the European Commission’s (Directorates General Environment and Climate Action) LIFE funding programme of operating grants for European Environmental NGOs. The content of this publication does not reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Responsibility for the information and views expressed in the publication lies entirely with the authors.