, en Lavaux, commemorative plaque on the way Chemin de la Dame In the 1970s and 2000s, Franz Weber launched three cantonal
popular initiatives for the complete
protection of the Lavaux region and two of them directly succeeded. In 2007 the vineyard landscape of Lavaux was registered as a World Heritage Site by
UNESCO. One of the Foundation's first international campaigns in defence of animals was the fight against the yearly slaughters of seals on the coast of
Labrador in
Canada, The campaign, which started in 1976, included a trip with French film actress
Brigitte Bardot and 75 newspaper reporters to the Labrador seal hunting grounds. In 1983 the
European Economic Community banned all importations of baby seal pelts into the EEC. In 1978, the
Council of Europe in
Strasbourg appealed to Franz Weber to save ancient
Delphi in Greece from destruction by an American-Greek project of industrialization. Weber created the successful international movement, "Save Delphi" and within only a few months stopped the project. When, in 1986, Delphi is again threatened by industrialization "Save Delphi" was successfully revived. In 1997, in recognition of his merits and campaigns, the
town of Delphi named Weber Honorary Citizen and Protector of Delphi. In 1983, Weber battled against the destruction of the alluvial forests of the
Danube between Hainburg and
Vienna in Austria to build a hydro-electrical complex. His Foundation invited 40 European journalists to Vienna and to draw international attention to the project. On Christmas 1984 the Austrian government stopped the project and in 1995 Chancellor Franz Vranitzki decides to "offer the water forest region of the Danube to the coming generations as the first Austrian National Park". Also in 1983, parallel to the Danube campaign, Weber saved the turn-of-the century Grandhotel Giessbach on Lake Brienz near
Interlaken from destruction by raising the funds to purchase the property. He then entrusted it to the Swiss People as a place of culture, of meeting and of rejuvenation. In 2008, a referendum initiated by Weber to end
Swiss Air Force training flights over "tourist areas" (virtually the entire country) to reduce the "impact of noise pollution", was soundly defeated by a vote of 68.1%. Weber, who referred to the Air Force's newest jet fighter, the
F/A-18 Hornet, as "oversized, ineffective, and ruinous to our country", proposed the use of simulators to replace air operations. On 12 March 2012, the "Franz Weber initiative" was accepted by
50.6 per cent of voters. It aims to reduce
urban sprawl by limiting the number of
second homes (with a quota of twenty per cent per
commune). Also in 2012, the Franz Weber Foundation launched an international campaign against bullfighting. The campaign is called "Childhood without violence", and focuses on the Latinamerican countries that allow bullfights, and in particular draws attention to the effects on minors of witnessing bullfighting. ==Franz Weber Parks==