Volunteering for land care – A typology of civil society organizations in Austria, Germany and Switzerland as the basis for establishing new initiatives Marianne Penker, Pamela Mühlmann & Andreas Muhar Keywords: �radi�ional lands�a�es, �ul�ural lands�a�es, land �are, �io�ul�ural di�ersi�y, �i�il so�ie�y or�ani�a�ions, �olun�eerin�, Aus� �radi�ional lands�a�es, �ul�ural lands�a�es, land �are, �io�ul�ural di�ersi�y, �i�il so�ie�y or�ani�a�ions, �olun�eerin�, Aus� �ria, Germany, Swi��erland Abstract Traditional agricultural landscapes are hotspots of biocultural diversity but often threatened by land abandonment or changes in cultivation methods. This is a particular challenge for protected areas and their mission to safeguard the local biocultural heritage. The aim of this article is to present a typology of civil society organizations that coordinate the voluntary engage- ment of non-farmers for collective land care and to provide insights for those who want to initiate similar volunteers’ activities to preserve cultural landscapes. We analyse 20 volunteer organizations in Austria, Germany and Switzerland with regard to the formal structure, the goals pursued, the integration of volunteers and the spatial scope of the activities. In an empirically grounded, inductively deduced typification, we identify six types of volunteer organizations: (1) volunteer tourism facilitated by agencies, (2) national nature conservation associations, (3) cultural heritage volunteering, (4) regional land care associations, (5) local landscape protection initiatives, and (6) corporate volunteering. This heterogeneity has to be taken into account when discussing options for initiating new voluntary land care action as not all types can meet the practical and formal requirements in different geographical and organizational contexts. 21 Research eco.mont - Volume 6, Number 2, July 2014 ISSN 2073-106X print version ISSN 2073-1558 online version: http://epub.oeaw.ac.at/eco.mont Introduction Traditional agricultural systems, created, shaped and maintained by generations of farmers, have re- sulted in outstanding landscapes, valuable biodiver- sity and cultural heritage (Müller 2012). Today many of these traditional landscapes are endangered as a result of land abandonment and changes in culti- vation practices (Vos & Meekes 1999). In protected areas, such as NATURA 2000 sites, national parks, biosphere reserves or UNESCO heritage sites, loss of traditional landscape elements and of the associated biocultural heritage is a particular challenge. While the value of traditional landscapes for biodiversity, herit- age and tourism is internationally acknowledged, e. g. by the Alpine Convention, the European Landscape Convention or the UN initiative for the conservation and adaptive management of Globally Important Ag- ricultural Heritage Systems, there is no clear answer to the question of who is responsible for taking care of these landscapes. Beside state-based instruments, such as legal regulations, zoning or agro-environmental schemes, many market-based mechanisms have been proposed and established (e. g. entrance fees, eat the view marketing initiatives, and all kinds of green and landscape based labels, cf. Boesch et al. 2008). Finally, many citizens feel responsible for the landscape they are living in and therefore engage in voluntary action. There is a fast growing body of literature on state- (e. g. Lange 2011) and market-based mechanisms (e. g. Wilson and Hart 2000); collective voluntary action for landscape care, however, has been scarcely analysed so far. We defne voluntary land care as activities to directly conserve or improve landscape qualities with no or only minimal monetary compensation for the participants. Previous studies have analysed particular civil soci- ety organizations acting at local, national or even in- ternational level (Kieninger et al. 2011; Stenseke 2009) or the benefts and motivations of conservation vol- unteers (Miles et al. 1998; Bruyere & Rappe 2007; Bell et al. 2008; Measham & Barnett 2008). A systematic overview and analysis of different civil society organi- zations volunteering for land care is not yet available (in this paper we use the term organization as syno- nym both for formally established civil society organi- zations and for rather informally structured citizen’s initiatives). Hence, this paper focuses on the following questions: - Which types of citizens’ initiatives active in land care can be distinguished? - Which objectives guide their collective voluntary action? - How are they organized? - How do they contribute to land care? The general aim was to derive a typology of civil society organizations active in land care from a com- parative analysis in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The spatial scope has been defned by the similar cul- tural and geographic contexts of these countries to allow for comparability. Most of these activities are conducted in protected mountain areas. Volunteering as a form of landscape gov- ernance Traditional landscapes, formerly unintended by- products of human land use, are now regarded as a key environmental and recreational asset and are high- ly valued (Van Huylenbroeck et al. 1999; Laschewski & Penker 2009). As a consequence of this valoriza-