“…Along their path of success, protected areas have developed to institutions beyond their primary aim of protecting natural goods and have taken on many of societal functions, such as economic development in mostly rural peripheral regions, creation and education of sustainable knowledge, handling regional and global change (cf. Jungmeier et al 2018;Egner et al 2017;Hammer et al 2012). Hammer et al (2016, p. 19) point to this shift of paradigm by stressing, that "parks in Europe thus represent a great hope for shaping the future at the regional level.…”