CROATIA Natura 2000

Project Dinaric Alps Rare Habitats and Species Conservation Project

In the process of transformation towards membership of the European Community, Croatia has to meet the standards of the European Community in time. Croatia has also to harmonise the national nature conservation policy with European standards. In particular, Croatia has to take care for the protection of habitats and individual species of European interest. In addition, the annexes on the EC Habitats Directive (HD) have to be updated with respect to rare, threatened and endemic species, the results of which might affect their conservation status, and natural or semi-natural habitats that are in danger of disappearance or that have a small natural range and yet present outstanding examples of typical characteristics of biogeographical regions in Croatia. From a preliminary analysis of the listed species and habitats in the HD annexes, it appeared that most of the habitats and animal species mentioned in the HD were distributed in the northern part of Croatia only, and not in karst area of the Dinaric Alps or along the coast of Adriatic Sea. Also, we concluded that there were omissions in the list of habitats and list of species which require a special habitat protection.

By contrast, we concluded that the knowledge of the distribution of species characteristic of the Dinaric Alps is poor and incomplete. This is also true of the population status and the trends for most of these rare species. Croatia has already prepared a list of threatened species for specific habitats and endemic species for uptake in the annexes of the Bern Convention. However, knowledge about the distribution of Dinaric Alps species is currently quite inadequate. We have to pay particular attention to the likelihood that pressure on nature will be very high in the near future because of the strategic location of the Dinaric Alps along the Adriatic Sea. There are already plans to build new highways, gasoline and gas pipelines, and new tourist infrastructure in the whole karst zone including the Dinaric Alps. The recent war caused major changes in the demographic and the socio-economic circumstances in the countryside. Over large areas of the Dinaric karst, agriculture was abandoned or became very extensive due to lack of management and a decline in the farming population (depopulation impact). The consequences are also that the semi-natural habitats and grassland species are under a severe threat. Without management, the semi-natural grasslands with their typical flora and fauna will disappear. Natural surface waters which are rich in endemic fish species and associated cavernicolous water fauna are in danger because in the system of water management they have lost their natural functions: rivers have been engineered and embanked to prevent flooding, river flow directions have been changed, dams have been built for hydroelectricity power stations and water pollution can be a threat in the karst areas.

The National Strategy on Nature Conservation and the Action Plan for the Protection of Biological and Landscape Diversity of the Republic of Croatia (adopted by the Parliament in June 1999) put some of these rare habitats and species from forests, cave fauna, wetlands and semi-natural grasslands on the priority list of habitats and species of national importance. At the moment, Croatia has to implement the National Strategy and Action Plan through identification of these valuable habitats and priority species and also to upgrade the national legislation for the long term preservation of the habitats and priority species. At the same time, Croatia has to meet European standards for protection of nature that has European-level importance.

It was in this situation that in the summer of 2003 the project of KNNV and CNHM "The Dinaric Alps Rare Habitats and Species Conservation Project - Croatia" (PINMATRA /2003/024) was started. The project is financed by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, and of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This project was also connected with the implementation of the National Strategy on Nature Conservation.

This project also partly overlapped with the Karst Ecosystem Conservation (KEC) project inaugurated by GEF/WB, which had started one year before this project. But the KEC project is connected with the protection of biodiversity in some known hotspot locations in the western part of the Croatian Dinaric Alps, mostly in protected areas where more knowledge is available. However, in the current Dinaric Alps project, the first priority was to provide a good database for rare and endemic species for the identification of potential species and habitats for the updating of the HD.

CROATIAPARTA.PDF

Veen Ecology Ltd, 31 January 2010