DOI 10.1515/cplbu-2015-0038 3 rd International Engineering and Technology Education Conference & 7 th Balkan Region Conference on Engineering and Business Education Sibiu, Romania, November, 1 st – 4 th , 2015 New Skills in Education for Biodiversity Conservation in Romania Maria-Mihaela ANTOFIE Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Sibiu, Romania mihaela_antofie@yahoo.com Camelia SAND SAVA Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Sibiu, Romania camelia.sand@yahoo.com ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to analyse political and regulatory frameworks for connecting education and environment authorities in order to reveal opportunities for introducing new activities based on living organisms into the biology curriculum. The article is also proposing a conceptual framework for capacity building based on the analysis of relevant results at the international level, regarding the experiential learning process. Based on the results of this analysis Romania has the capacity to implement new activities under the public curricula for biology in order to support the development of new skills for ensuring biodiversity conservation as a whole. Moreover, at least three native species, domesticated or wild, may become subjects for next activities development under the existing curricula. Keywords: education, new skills, biodiversity conservation, living organisms. INTRODUCTION The current catalyst for socio-economic development worldwide is generally represented by political commitments taken by a State or Government (Robinson, 2004). To know and understand the access to and use of natural resources is a pre-requirement imposed by the country's economic future (Jones, 2005; Tilford and Whyte, 2010). The European Summit in Lisbon set new standards for the EU economy based on sustainable development principles (Jones, 2005) and it is recognized for more than ten years the need to raise the education threshold in the European context (Tessaring and Wannan, 2010). Also these authors pointed out that training and vocational education, are integral parts of the complex process of implementing the Lisbon strategy and may have a contribution to consolidate new competencies undoubtedly supporting this process. In this context the education in classical natural science should make their contributions for this scope. As an example,