Since the beginning of the 1990s, monitoring of habitats has been a widespread tool to record and assess changes in habitat quality, for example due to land use change. Thus, Article 11 of the Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) requires, inter alia, monitoring of the conservation status of habitat types listed in Annex I of the Habitats Directive, carried out by the Member States of the European Union (EU). This monitoring provides the foundation for the National Reports on the measures implemented and their effectiveness (Art. 17 Habitats Directive), which Member States have to submit to the European Commission every six years. Based on these requirements, Member States have developed different monitoring programmes or have adapted previously existing monitoring schemes to include relevant aspects of the Habitats Directive.
The parameter ‘structure and functions’ is a key parameter for the assessment of the conservation status of habitat types as it provides information on the quality of the habitats. A standardised questionnaire was developed and sent to the competent authorities of Member States to compare and analyse the assessment methods of the quality of habitat types. Responses were received from 13 of the 28 Member States, while it was possible to include another Member State in the analysis by evaluating appropriate literature.
The analysis revealed very different approaches and progress amongst the Member States in the development and implementation of monitoring programmes tailored to the reporting obligations of Article 17 of the Habitats Directive. Some Member States established a special standardised monitoring programme for Article 11 of the Habitats Directive, while others used data from already existing programmes (e.g. habitat mapping, large-scale forest inventories, landscape monitoring). Most Member States responding to the questionnaire use monitoring based on samples but the data collection, sample sizes and level of statistical certainty differ considerably. The same applies to the aggregation of data and the methods for the assessment of the parameter ‘structure and functions’. In contrast to the assessment of conservation status as part of the reporting obligations according to Article 17 of the Habitats Directive, no standardised EU guidelines exist for monitoring. The present study discusses differences in the monitoring programmes and evaluates them with regard to the objectives of comparable assessments of conservation status of habitat types in the National Reports of Member States or at a biogeographical level.
This study analyses whether the Natura 2000 network of Sites of Community Importance (SCIs) is able to protect relict species in the taxonomic groups of higher plants, molluscs, dragonflies and damselflies as well as butterflies (only Rhopalocera) in Germany. Altogether, a total of 157 species from all groups are identified as relict species in Germany. Fourteen of these are included in Annexes II, IV or V of the Habitats Directive.Most glacial relicts are well covered by an indirect protection regime of the European Union (EU) Habitats Directive as they occur in 46 of Annex I habitat types, and their occurrences are to a large extent covered by Natura 2000 sites (SCIs). For a few relict species and certain relict plant communities a gap remains in the EU protection regime, which can be filled by a national protection regime, for example, in nature reserves. The best way to protect local relict species is to include them in special management plans for their conservation.
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