1970 - European Conservation Year

During 1970, over twenty countries took part in a European Conservation Year. Organised under the guidance of the Council of Europe, it aimed to focus attention on the way we affect and change the lands we live in by our various activities - as individuals and as communities. Housing, industry, transport, all these will continue to bring changes to or surroundings. Yet all these things must be fitted in, together with the needs of food and timber production and of leisure and recreation, without destroying the quality of our environment.

The aims of the European Conservation Year were:

• to agree on policies which will help to conserve and improve the quality of our environment and to find the best ways to put them into action;
• to make conservation problems clearer to everyone, so that there will be better support for any measures needed to deal with them.

The European Conservation Year opened with a conference in Strasbourg in February 1970. Delegates from the countries taking part discussed four major topics: the ways in which urbanisation, industry, agriculture and forestry, and the new demands of leisure, are affecting the land in which we live, work and play. The conference issued a declaration which went to each government and to public authorities in each of the countries to act upon.

This issue commemorates Norways' participation in the European Conservation Year with these four lovely stamps on this cover. The cover was given to me by my friend Pia.

The four cards show a wolf; a Pasque flower; The Voringsfossen waterfall, which is the 83rd highest waterfall in Norway. It lies at the top of the Mabodalen in the municipality of Eidfjord, in Hordaland, not far from the road that connects Oslo with Bergen. It is perhaps the most famous in the country and a major tourist attraction. And the fourth stamp depicts a white-tailed sea eagle.