Realising the potential of Natura 2000 to achieve EU conservation goals as 2020 approaches

Abstract

In the last decades the EU has made substantial efforts implementing conservation strategies to halt biodiversity loss. However, little improvement has been reported. Given the proximity of the 2020 landmark set by the EU Biodiversity Strategy and the Convention for Biological Diversity, alternatives to reduce this conservation gap and prospect future strategies must be assessed urgently. Here, we explore how the current Natura 2000 could be used to enhance management of terrestrial and freshwater threatened vertebrates. We identified Natura 2000 sites to increase the coverage of threatened species as target species under two alternative scenarios: a policy-driven approach including only threatened vertebrates listed in the Directives; and a conservation-driven approach, including all the remaining threatened vertebrates. We show that representation of threatened vertebrates in Natura 2000 could be improved by updating lists of target species in less than 1% and 3% of sites in the policy-driven and conservation-driven scenarios, respectively. We highlight the strength of Natura 2000, with sites that complement each other and could contribute to achieving more ambitious conservation targets under future strategies. Prioritisation exercises like this could help realise the potential of this network and enhance the management of threatened species and improve current gaps.

Twelve Recommendations for Advancing Marine Conservation in European and Contiguous Seas

“…Acknowledging the complexities behind revising the Annexes of the Habitats and Birds Directives, alternative strategies should be also reinforced in the future. Among these, opening resource investments to all threatened species through programs like LIFE (Hermoso et al, 2018) or including these threatened species in Prioritized Action Frameworks (i.e., strategic pluriannual tools that review species conservation actions and financing needs across the Natura 2000 network) could provide funding opportunities to high-risk species not adequately covered by current provisions (Hermoso et al, 2019b).…”

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

“…In our taxa specific scenarios, the top 33% priority areas overlap 295 Natura 2000 sites, of which 222 sites include priority areas for invertebrates, 92 sites for amphibians, 73 sites for plants, 63 sites for fish species, 58 sites for reptiles, and 42 sites for mammals. Achieving the EU Biodiversity Strategy targets will result in overshooting the one-third strictly protected target, and will require significant land availability and funding to implement, neither being a feasible and efficient prerequisite to conservation in Romania and the EU (Hermoso et al, 2019). Despite their limited value for the EU biodiversity targets, the taxonomic group-based scenarios can be used to identify key areas for a specific taxon and could be used to complement the more realistic, biogeographic regional-based scenarios.…”

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

“…Achieving the EU Biodiversity Strategy 203 targets will result in overshooting the one-third strictly protected target, and will require significant land availability and funding to implement, neither being a feasible and efficient prerequisite to conservation in Romania and the EU (Hermoso et al 2019). Despite their limited value for the EU biodiversity targets, the taxonomic group-based scenarios can be used to identify key areas for a specific taxon and could be used to complement the more realistic, biogeographic regional-based scenarios.…”