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

Section 5National IPA teamNational coordinator: Dimitar Peev(Institute of Botany, BAS, Sofia)Other contributing organisations:Botanical Garden, BAS Sofia; BulgarianWilderness Fund, Bulgarian BiodiversityFoundationMain funder: REC through the ‘PlantsAlong the Borders’ ProjectBulgariaBy Peev D., Petrova A., Spiridonov J., Meshinev T., Apostolava I.,Tzoneva S.,Valjovska N., Kaneva Z.Bulgaria covers an area of almost 111,000 km 2 with extensivemountain and forest areas of the Rhodope, Rila, Pirin and StaraPlanina ranges, and a coastline along the Black Sea. Bulgariaborders Serbia, FYR of Macedonia, Greece,Turkey and Romania,and has three biogeographic zones, the Alpine, Continental, andBlack Sea. Bulgaria has a high level of mountain endemics andlimited range species, with large expanses of deciduous andconiferous forest, including unique areas of endemic pine forests.Bulgaria is due to accede to the EU in 2007 and is a member ofthe Council of Europe.Background to the ProjectThis project has provided the first stage in identifying and protecting IPAs. Existing datahave been collated, potential sites identified, site reports for two sites completed, and anassessment of plant conservation policy in Bulgaria completed. Further work onidentification needs to be carried out and there is a high level of interest in continuingthis work, and also on implementing protection strategies.Potential IPAs and cross-border IPAs in BulgariaCurrent IPA statisticsTotal number of potential IPAs: 114Number of cross-border IPAs: 1 with Serbia, 1 with Macedonia (FYR)Area of IPAs (ha): up to 1000 (82), 1000-150,000 (20), >150,000 (12)68