important plant areas in central and eastern europe - hirc.botanic.hr ...

Section 2MethodologyDefinition and general principlesAn IPA is a natural or semi-natural site exhibiting exceptional botanical richness and/orsupporting an outstanding assemblage of rare, threatened and/or endemic plant speciesand/or vegetation of high botanic value.Criterion A:Criterion B:Criterion C:Threatened SpeciesBotanical RichnessThreatened HabitatsIPA Criteria were developed and refined through extensive consultation over severalyears and references are given at the end of this section.The IPA Site Selection Manual forEurope gives more detail on identifying sites.Criteria sources, categories and thresholds for Europe used in this project are presentedin the table below.Criterion A: threatened speciesFor the seven partner countries 518 taxa were included in the Criterion A list ofthreatened species. 403 of those were vascular plants, 54 were bryophytes, 34 werelichens, and 27 were fungi.Ai Global Threat 42 taxaAi/Aii Global & European Threat 32 taxaAii European (Regional Threat) 196 taxaAiii National Endemic (Threatened) 109 taxaAiv Near Endemic/Limited Range (Threatened) 137 taxaAccepted Sources for EuropeFor Ai, global threat, the following sources were used: the IUCN Global Red List 1997and 2002; the World List of Threatened Trees 1998; the Global Red List for Bryophytes2001. For Aii, European Threat, the following sources were used: the EU HabitatsDirective Annexes IIb and IVb; the Bern Convention Appendix 1; the European Red Listof Bryophytes 1995; the European Red List of Macro-lichens 1989. The 33 threatenedfungi species prepared by the European Committee for the Conservation of Fungi(ECCF) were also used in this project under Aii. National red lists were used forassessing the threat status of Aiii, national endemics, and Aiv, near endemic/limited rangespecies.One of the main challenges for this criterion is to identify priority threatened specieswhich are not endemic or limited range, but are relatively widespread geographically anddeclining everywhere.A new IUCN European Red List would help to identify thesetypes of species. National IUCN Red Lists in those countries which do not currentlyhave them, and European Red Lists for lichens, fungi and algae would also help toprioritise conservation target species.16