“Mind the gap!” – How well does Natura 2000 cover species of European interest?

Abstract

Setting aside protected areas is widely recognized as one of the most effective measures to prevent species from extinction. Accordingly, there has been a tremendous effort by governments worldwide to establish protected areas, resulting in over 100,000 sites, which are set aside, to achieve the 10% target proposed at the Fourth World Park Congress in 1992 in Caracas. The main effort of the European Union to achieve this target is the Natura 2000 network of protected areas, comprising over 25,000 sites representing 18% of the area of the 27 Member States of the European Union. The designation of Natura 2000 sites was based on species and habitats listed in the Annexes of the Habitats and Birds Directive. The effectiveness of the selection process and the resulting Natura 2000 network has often been questioned as each country made its designations largely independently and in most cases without considering the theories of optimal REsEARCH ARtiClE Launched to accelerate biodiversity conservation A peer-reviewed open-access journalBernd Gruber et al. / Nature Conservation 3: 45-63 (2012) 46 reserve site selection. However, the effectiveness of the selection process and the Natura 2000 network has never been explicitly analysed at the European scale. Here we present such an analysis focusing on the representation of Annex II species of the Habitats Directive in the Natura 2000 network relative to a random allocation of species to sites. Our results show that the network is effective in covering target species and minimizing the number of gap species (i.e. species not represented in a single site of the Natura 2000 network). We demonstrate that the representation is uneven among species. Some species are overrepresented and many species are only represented in a low number of sites. We show that this is mainly due to differing patterns in species ranges, as wide-spread species are inevitably represented in many sites, but narrow ranged species are often covered only by a small number of sites in a particular area. Finally, we propose a representation index that detects species that are underrepresented and could be used to direct future conservation efforts.

Effectiveness of the Natura 2000 network to cover threatened species

“…The Natura 2000 network is governed by the Directive 79/409/EEC, adopted in April 1979 for the conservation of wild birds (also called "Birds Directive") and the Directive 92/43/EEC, adopted in May 1992 for the conservation of natural habitats, wild fauna and flora (also called "Habitats Directive"). Even if the Natura 2000 network is a European network of natural and semi-natural sites with high heritage values due to the exceptional flora and fauna they contain, the effectiveness of this network still remains unclear (Gruber et al 2012).…”

“…While the designation of SPAs is based on the presence of bird species listed in the annexes of the Birds Directive, including a validation stage of the EU, SACs designation (Habitats Directive) is more complex and involves several stages (Evans 2012). Nationally, Natura 2000 sites are selected on the basis of national lists proposed by the member states.…”

At the intersection of cultural and natural heritage: Distribution and conservation of the type localities of Italian endemic vascular plants

“…Protected areas vary widely between and within countries and regions, and the varying characteristics include the institution date, conservation focus, effective level of protection, permanence of protection, constancy of protection, ecological scale of protection, type of management, management authority and reference legislation, to cite some of them. In addition, the effectiveness of the selection process and the resulting Natura 2000 network have often been questioned because each country made its designations largely independently, and the designation of sites has been criticised as depending too strongly on governmental politics, economic and cultural criteria, and interactions between society and the environment Fenu et al, 2017;Gruber et al, 2012;Orlikowska et al, 2016;Trochet and Schmeller, 2013). In addition, in their analysis, Trochet and Schmeller (2013) demonstrated that the Natura 2000 network also covers species not listed in the annexes of the Habitats Directive, at least in the case of mammals, birds and reptiles; this might happen also for plants.…”

How much Biodiversity is in Natura 2000? : the “Umbrella Effect” of the European Natura 2000 protected area network : technical report

“…2.2 Importance of Natura 2000 for taxa Gruber et al (2012) devised a representation index (REX), in which he calculates the representation proportion for each species by dividing the representation of each species by the total number of Natura 2000 sites in the EU-25 countries. Comparing the REX for different species groups revealed significant differences between groups.…”