Natura 2000 Habitat Types of Greece Evaluated in the Light of Distribution, threat and Responsibility

Abstract

Greece harbours 85 Annex I habitat types and 30 additional types selected from a national perspective. There are 359 Natura 2000 sites containing 92 habitat types in Greece, of which 78 (21.7%) have been included in the area of responsibility of management institutions. To establish priority concepts for policy-makers and provide monitoring guidelines we have used the following criteria: total national distribution, degree of national responsibility and present and potential threats. Based on the total number of their occurrences in the Greek Natura 2000 sites, 30 of the 92 habitat types are considered rare, 13 infrequent, 24 scattered and 25 widespread or abundant. A reference list with 42 threat categories and their impact on the Greek habitat types is presented here for the first time. Greece takes a high responsibility for the following habitats: 16 endemic types; 14 important for endemic species; 17 types for which Greece forms the centre of the overall range; 12 widespread types with the largest stands in Greece; 26 types considered rare throughout Europe; 25 that occur in Greece on the edge of the overall range; and 35 that may be assigned a particular quality as stepping stones within the Natura 2000 network. Panayotis Dimopoulos (Corresponding author e-mail: pdimopul? cc.uoi.gr), Laboratory of Ecology and Biodiversity Conservation, Department of Environmental and Natural Resources Management, University of loannina, Seferi 2, GR-30100, Agrinio, Greece; Erwin Bergmeier and Petra Fischer, University of G?ttingen, Albrecht von Haller Institute of Plant Sciences, Department of Vegetation Analysis and Phytodiversity, Untere Karsp?le 2, D-37073 G?ttingen, Germany. INTRODUCTION There are 359 sites incorporated in the Euro pean Ecological Network Natura 2000 distributed throughout all the floristic regions in Greece, of which 208 sites have been designated Sites of Community Importance (SCIs). Thirty one are designated both as SCIs and SPAs (Special Protection Areas) and 120 additional sites as SPAs. It is hoped that all of the SCIs will become Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) in the year 2006. Seventy eight Natura 2000 sites are included within the boundaries of management plans to be imple mented by 27 management institutions established in 2001 and 2003. The procedure for establishing the management institutions in the protected areas of Greece is regulated according to Law 2742/99 (Land planning and sustainable development). The management institutions are authorized to under take various responsibilities including: the development of management plans and reg ulations; the monitoring and evaluation of the application of the regulations; control of human intervention; elaboration of studies; expressing opinions within the framework of planning processes and projects concerning land use change, construction and infrastructure mea sures; delineation of areas within which construction works and infrastructural developments should take place; research and public awareness campaigns. Thus, for 21.7% of the Hellenic Natura 2000 sites, management and monitoring plans for the habitat types and species of the EU Habitats Directive will have to be provided and enforced in the course of the following two years. According to Article 11 of the Habitats Directive, EU member states are obliged to survey the conservation status of the natural habitats and species referred to in Article 2 with particular regard to priority natural habitat types and priority species (Anon. 1992). Greece harbours 115 habitat types occurring within the total number of Natura 2000 sites, of which 85 are listed in Annex I of the Habitats Directive and 30 are additional Hellenic habitat types (not included in the Directive). Ninety-two of these 115 habitat types (73 Annex I habitat types +19 additional ones) occur in the 78 Natura 2000 sites with management institutions. Hence, 86% of the Annex I habitat types of Greece are represented in 21.7% of the Natura 2000 sites. Greece, as with all EU member states, is obliged to draw up criteria for establishing standards and Biology and Environment: Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. 106 , No. 3, 175-187 (2006). ? Royal Irish Academy 175 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.54 on Fri, 01 Jul 2016 03:58:48 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Biology and Environment priorities for the implementation of a monitoring and conservation status assessment system for the habitat types. However, there is no tradition in Greece of long-term ecological sampling and monitoring and consequently detailed knowledge of the majority of habitat types is scarce. Overall guidelines for the monitoring and establishment of a conservation status assessment system for habitat types in Greece are in preparation (Dimopoulos et al 2005a; 2005b). Taking into consideration existing European approaches, the following criteria are considered essential for setting priorities for those monitoring concepts in urgent need of clarification for Greek habitat types. These are based chiefly on specific suggestions from Germany that to date have provided the most information (e.g. R?ckriem and Roscher 1999; Ssymank 2000; Fartmann et al 2001; Drachenfels 2003; Geske et al. 2003; Burkhardt et al. 2004; Weissbecker and Arbeitsgruppe Ffh-Grundd atenerhebung 2004). The criteria are: total national distribution; degree of national responsibility for habitat types in terms of their distribution within the European Union and the Mediterranean bio geographical region; priority habitat type; present and potential threats as a basis for esti mating the degree of vulnerability of habitat types at national level. The objectives of the present paper are: to draw attention to the natural habitat types for which Greece has a special responsibility from a national, Mediterranean, European and inter national perspective; to provide a preliminary assessment of the total distribution of each habitat type in Greece and its Natura 2000 sites; to provide a reference list for the impacts and present and potential threats to the Greek Natura 2000 habitat types and a cross-reference between the threats and each habitat type; to score and rank the priorities for monitoring habitat types on a combined basis within the parameters of distribution, responsibility and threats. MATERIAL AND METHODS For the interpretation of the habitat types included in Annex I, as well as for the additional Hellenic habitat types, Daf?s et al. (1996, 2001) and the Interpretation Manual of the European Union Habitat (European Communities 2003) have been used. The habitat types occurring in the 78 sites of the Natura 2000 network with management institutions are categorised as rare, infrequent, scattered, widespread and abundant. These cate gories are dependent on the total number of occurrences of the corresponding habitat type in the Greek Natura 2000 sites (Table 1, see also Dimopoulos et al. 2005a). The distribution cate gory for each habitat within Greek Natura 2000 sites, and nationally, is presented in Table 2. To determine the degree of responsibility of Greece for the habitat types, the criteria given in Table 3 have been adopted and applied (Riickriem and Roscher 1999; Dimopoulos et al. 2005a; 2005b). The present and potential threats corres ponding to each Natura 2000 habitat type are attributed to 6 categories and 42 subcategories, and a reference list of threats has been prepared, published and evaluated here for the first time (Table 4). The total number of threats affecting each habitat type is also given in Table 2. We analysed the six threat categories per habitat type group of the EU Habitats Directive calculating an impact value for each threat category and habitat type group (Table 5). This value expresses the significance of a threat category for each habitat type group, e.g. impacts from cultivation and other agricultural activities are considered relevant 10 times among the coastal-halophytic habitat types group, while it is noted 92 times throughout all 9 habitat type groups. The calculation of the impact value of this threat category, given as an example, is made as follows: 100 x 10/92 = 10.87% (11%). For the purpose of determining priorities for monitoring habitat types in Greece, we applied a combined approach using the parameters of distribution, responsibility and threat. Each habitat type was ranked according to these three parameters and assigned numerical values to denote relative importance (Brower et al 1997). For each of these parameters, and in order to be able to combine the calculations, the following three-point scales with a minimum value of 1 (least important) and a maximum value of 3 (most important), have been used: Table 1 ? Distribution categories of the habitat types and their relative value based on their occurrence in the Natura 2000 sites of Greece. Number of sites Category Scale value 1-9 Rare 3 10-19 Infrequent 3 20-39 Scattered 2 40-69 Widespread 2 > 70 Abundant 1