Identification of areas of very high biodiversity value to achieve the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 key commitments

Abstract

European Union seeks to increase the protected areas by 2030 to 30% of the EU terrestrial surface, of which at least 10% of areas high biodiversity value should be strictly protected. Designation of Natura 2000 network, the backbone of nature protection in the EU, was mostly an expert-opinion process with little systematic conservation planning. The designation of the Natura 2000 network in Romania followed the same non-systematic approach, resulting in a suboptimal representation of invertebrates and plants. To help identify areas with very high biodiversity without repeating past planning mistakes, we present a reproducible example of spatial prioritization using Romania's current terrestrial Natura 2000 network and coarse-scale terrestrial species occurrence. The planning exercise uses 371 terrestrial Natura 2000 Sites of Community Importance (Natura 2000 SCI), designated to protect 164 terrestrial species listed under Annex II of Habitats Directive in Romania. Species occurrences in terrestrial Natura 2000 and Natura 2000 sites were aggregated at a Universal Traverse Mercator spatial resolution of 1 km2. To identify priority terrestrial Natura 2000 sites for species conservation, and to explore if the Romanian Natura 2000 network sufficiently represents species included in Annex II of Habitats Directive, we used Zonation v4, a decision support software tool for spatial conservation planning. We carried out the analyses nationwide (all Natura 2000 sites) and separately for each biogeographic region (i.e., Alpine, Continental, Pannonian, Steppic and Black Sea). The performance of national-level planning of top priorities is low. On average, when considering 10% of the landscape of Natura 2000 sites as protected, 20% of the distribution of species listed in Annex II of Habitats Directive are protected. As a consequence, the representation of species by priority terrestrial Natura 2000 sites is reduced when compared to the initial set of species. When planning by taxonomic group, the top-priority areas include only 10% of invertebrate distribution in Natura 2000. When selecting top-priority areas by biogeographical region, there are significantly fewer gap species than in the national level and by taxa scenarios; thus, the scenario outperforms the national-level prioritization. The designation of strictly protected areas as required by the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 should be followed by setting clear targets for the representation of species and habitats at the biogeographical region level.

Arguments based on biocultural diversity to cease abandonment of traditional agricultural systems: Lessons from Poland

“…Residents are increasingly aware of the need for the conservation of cultural heritage, landscape, natural environment, and agricultural system assets, which is apparent from numerous grassroots initiatives joined by young people (Tables 3 and 4). The awareness is further built by programmes and projects funded by the EU to preserve biodiversity, supporting initiatives to promote cultural heritage or protect areas through sustainable development (Miu et al 2020;Hristov 2020). An external threat could be a decreased readiness of residents to keep alive traditional farming and craft.…”

Local-scale impact of wind energy farms on rare, endemic, and threatened plant species

“…The establishment of protected areas is a major tool for conserving biodiversity worldwide (Miu et al, 2020). Protected areas were created to safeguard biodiversity, more so of rare, endemic, and threatened plant species, but are presently facing pressures such as dense transport infrastructure, over-tourism, intensive agriculture, habitat transformation, and altered hydrological and fire regimes (Schulze et al, 2018).…”

“…Owing to the multiplicity of continental and marine climatic influences, the Dobrogea region (SE Romania) is the most diverse area of the Steppic European Biogeographical Region (Rozylowicz et al, 2019). Dobrogea is regarded as a biodiversity hotspot, with a high diversity of species protected at the national or European level (Sârbu et al, 2006;Georgescu et al, 2015;Miu et al, 2018;Miu et al, 2020). Over 63% (i.e., 9,700 km 2 ) of the Dobrogea region is part of the European Natura 2000 network, either as Special Protection Areas (SPAs, established under the Birds Directive) or Sites of Community Importance (SCIs, established under the Habitats Directive) (Miu et al, 2018).…”