The primary objective of this large-scale conservation project is to link numerous valuable habitats in the project area into an ecological network in which the Green Belt serves as an ecological corridor. Large areas of forest, valuable farming countryside habitats and rivers are linked to the Green Belt by suitable stepping stone habitats and other corridors.
The main aim is to maintain the habitat diversity and structural diversity of near-natural segments of the Green Belt within the project region and foster the development of other areas to restore their conservation value. Other aims include long-term conservation, management and fostering of valuable, rare or endangered forest ecological communities and farming landscape habitats, and renaturalisation of selected sections of rivers.
The core area has a large share (about 43 percent) of near-natural and natural habitats. These notably include large areas of critically endangered habitat types (Red List categories 1 and 1-2) such as dystrophic ponds, European dry heath, transition mires and quaking bogs, petrifying springs with tufa formation, bog woodland and alluvial forests.
Other habitats of note include priority habitats under the Habitats Directive such as rupicolous basophilic grasslands, semi-natural dry grasslands, and forests of slopes, screes and ravines.
Also noteworthy are the large numbers of Red List species, including 12 Critically Endangered/RL 1 species and 140 Endangered/RL 2 species. Examples include barbastelle bat, common snipe, woodchat shrike, European crayfish, common river mussel, Hungarian iris, common corncockle, and oak polypore.