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

Executive SummaryExecutive SummaryThe Important Plant Areas (IPA) Programme aims to identify the best sites for wildplants, fungi and their habitats and to ensure the protection of these priority sites. IPAsare natural or semi-natural sites with exceptional botanical richness and/or supporting anoutstanding assemblage of rare, threatened or endemic plant species and/or vegetation ofhigh botanic value.They are identified using three criteria, threatened species (CriterionA), botanical richness (Criterion B) and threatened habitats (Criterion C).IPAs provide an essential resource for governments to assess their progress in fulfillingTarget 5 of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) Global Strategy for PlantConservation, 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 andsupport existing conservation programmes such as national protected area networks,the EU Natura 2000 network, the Bern Convention and Emerald Network, PEBLDS andPEEN, and the Ramsar Convention by providing up to date, easily accessible, plant data.IPAs have compatible aims and approaches with Important Bird Areas, Prime ButterflyAreas, Important Dragonfly Areas and Important Herpetological Areas and contribute tothe Key Biodiversity Areas concept.170 IPAs (21%) currently have no legal protection.IPAs can provide essential information to support and improve the Natura 2000Network of the EU Habitats Directive. Of the 510 IPAs in the new member states, 399IPAs 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. Insouth 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. IPAprojects are also being developed in many other countries in Europe and other regionsof the world.This report contains a summary of IPA methodology, the latest IPA data from twelvecountries on site features, threats, management and protection, a summary of the linksto existing legislation and programmes, and recommendations for plant conservationstakeholders. Detailed national IPA inventories will be published in 2005 by the sevenpartner countries.Hundreds of specialists in wild plants, fungi, mosses, lichens and algae took part inidentifying the best sites, and each national IPA team included a variety of individualsfrom academic institutions, state conservation agencies, and non-governmentalorganisations.The Carpathian Mountains contain a largenumber of IPAs across central and easternEurope such as the High Tatras ofSlovakia, shown here.7