important plant areas in central and eastern europe - Plantlife

Executive Summary
Executive Summary
The Important Plant Areas (IPA) Programme aims to identify the best sites for wild
plants, fungi and their habitats and to ensure the protection of these priority sites. IPAs
are natural or semi-natural sites with exceptional botanical richness and/or supporting an
outstanding assemblage of rare, threatened or endemic plant species and/or vegetation of
high botanic value.They are identified using three criteria, threatened species (Criterion
A), botanical richness (Criterion B) and threatened habitats (Criterion C).
IPAs provide an essential resource for governments to assess their progress in fulfilling
Target 5 of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Global Strategy for Plant
Conservation, and thus contribute to the World Summit on Sustainable Development’s
(WSSD) target to reduce significantly the loss of biodiversity by 2010.
IPAs are not legal site designations, instead they provide a framework to assess and
support existing conservation programmes such as national protected area networks,
the EU Natura 2000 network, the Bern Convention and Emerald Network, PEBLDS and
PEEN, and the Ramsar Convention by providing up to date, easily accessible, plant data.
IPAs have compatible aims and approaches with Important Bird Areas, Prime Butterfly
Areas, Important Dragonfly Areas and Important Herpetological Areas and contribute to
the Key Biodiversity Areas concept.
170 IPAs (21%) currently have no legal protection.
IPAs can provide essential information to support and improve the Natura 2000
Network of the EU Habitats Directive. Of the 510 IPAs in the new member states, 399
IPAs are also Natura 2000 sites.
In this current project, the first regional IPA identification programme in the world,
almost 800 IPAs were identified in seven countries in central and eastern Europe. In
south eastern Europe several hundred potential IPAs were identified in a parallel project,
and in Russia and the CIS region IPA projects are currently being developed. IPA
projects are also being developed in many other countries in Europe and other regions
of the world.
This report contains a summary of IPA methodology, the latest IPA data from twelve
countries on site features, threats, management and protection, a summary of the links
to existing legislation and programmes, and recommendations for plant conservation
stakeholders. Detailed national IPA inventories will be published in 2005 by the seven
partner countries.
Hundreds of specialists in wild plants, fungi, mosses, lichens and algae took part in
identifying the best sites, and each national IPA team included a variety of individuals
from academic institutions, state conservation agencies, and non-governmental
organisations.
The Carpathian Mountains contain a large
number of IPAs across central and eastern
Europe such as the High Tatras of
Slovakia, shown here.
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