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Building the European Union’s Natura 2000 network 11
Building the European Union’s Natura 2000 network
Douglas Evans1
1 European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity, 57 rue Cuvier, 75231 Paris cedex 05, France
Corresponding author: Douglas Evans (evans@mnhn.fr)
Academic editor: K. Henle|Received 15 July 2011 |Accepted 3 Junuary 2012 | Published 14 March 2012
Citation: Evans D (2012) Building the European Union’s Natura 2000 network. Nature Conservation 1: 11–26. doi:
10.3897/natureconservation.1.1808
Abstract
In the second half of the 20th Century there was a growing awareness of environmental problems, includ-
ing the loss of species and habitats, resulting in many national and international initiatives, including
the creation of organisations, such as the IUCN, treaties and conventions, such as Ramsar and the Berne
Convention, and the establishment of networks of protected areas. Natura 2000 is a network of sites in the
European Union for selected species and habitats listed in the 1979 Birds Directive and the 1992 Habi-
tats Directive. Under the Habitats Directive a series of seminars and other meetings have been held with
agreed criteria to ensure a coherent network. Despite both scientic and political diculties the network
is now nearing completion.
Keywords
Natura 2000, Birds Directive, Habitats Directive, Biogeographical seminars
Introduction
During the second half of the 20th century there was an increasing awareness of envi-
ronmental problems with publications such as Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (Carson
1962), Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972) and well publicised international
conferences, such as the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environ-
ment in Stockholm and the CBD in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. At the same time sev-
eral international organisations were formed, such as the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust
(1946); IUCN (1948); WWF (1961)and Friends of the Earth (1969). In particular,
there was widespread recognition that many species were in danger of extinction with
Nature Conservation 1: 11–26 (2012)
doi: 10.3897/natureconservation.1.1808
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Douglas Evans / Nature Conservation 1: 11–26 (2012)
12
the IUCN Redlist established in 1963 (Walter and Gillett 1998) and that many habitat
types were disappearing. is resulted in a marked increase in the creation of protected
areas, such as nature reserves and national parks, in the second half of the 20th century
(Dudley 2008). As a result of global concern for the loss of wetlands with a resulting
decline in numbers of waterfowl, the Ramsar Convention was signed in 1971, creat-
ing the rst international network of protected areas. Within Europe the Council of
Europe adopted the concept of a European network of Biogenetic reserves to conserve
natural or near-natural habitats in 1973, although the programme did not start until
1976. Currently there are 344 Biogenetic reserves in 22 countries but no sites have
been added since 1998 (information from EUNIS http://eunis.eea.europa.eu/designat
ions/80:IN01?fromWhere=original ).
Following the 2nd European Ministerial Conference on the Environment in 1976
Switzerland published a study recommending a European convention on nature con-
servation which led to the Berne convention on the Conservation of European Wild-
life and Natural Habitats which was opened for signatures in September 1979 (Ribault
2004). e convention included annexes of plant and animal species requiring protec-
tion but did not refer to networks of protected areas.
Within the European Union (in this paper EU refers both to the European Union
and its predecessors) environmental issues were initially focused on the control of pol-
lution although the 1973 rst action plan on the environment identied migratory
birds as a possible focus for EU action (EC 1973). After pressure from members of
the European parliament following lobbying from the public and Non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) for measures by the EU to protect birds, especially migratory
species, a proposal for a directive on the conservation of wild birds was published by
the European Commission in 1976 (EC 1977) and the Directive on the Conservation
of Wild Birds was adopted in 1979 (EC 1979). Before the 1987 Single Act the EU had
no formal competence for environmental issues but it was agreed unanimously by the
then nine Member States that the conservation of birds was a transfrontier responsi-
bility requiring coordinated action (Jordan 2005). e directive requires the member
states to designate sites, known as Special Protection Areas (SPAs), for a list of species
considered rare and/or threatened listed in Annex I of the Directive (currently 192 spe-
cies) together with sites which are important for migratory species.
e EU ratied the Berne Convention in 1982 and, following pressure from NGOs
and some Member States (MS), the European Commission published a proposed di-
rective to implement the convention in 1988 (EC 1988). Following the 1987 Single
European Act the EU now had a clear legal basis for taking action (Jordan 2005). After
heated discussion (e.g. see Sharp 1998) a Directive on the Conservation of Natural
Habitats and of Wild Fauna and Flora was adopted on 21 May 1992, more commonly
known as the Habitats Directive (EC 1992). is directive includes measures for the
strict protection of selected species (listed in Annex IV) and requires the designation of
protected sites for selected habitats and species listed in Annexes I & II known initially
as Sites of Community Importance (SCIs) and once designated as Special Areas of
Conservation (SACs). ese sites, together with the SPAs designated under the Birds
Building the European Union’s Natura 2000 network 13
Directive, form the Natura 2000 network. With more than 26 000 sites and covering
about 17.5% of the EU land territory, Natura 2000 is the largest network of protected
areas in the world (Sundseth and Creed 2008).
Although there now exists a substantial literature on the two directives and the
Natura 2000 network, little has been published on the development of the network
and in particular the series of biogeographical seminars held to examine the Member
State proposals for SCIs.
Establishing the network – a brief history
Special Protection Areas are selected and designated by the Member States with no
agreed EU criteria for site selection although many countries use criteria based on
the Ramsar 1% of yway population. Once sites have been designated, site details are
forwarded to the European Commission using an agreed format, which since the mid
1990s has been in the form of a database. is ‘Standard Data Form’ (SDF) includes
general information on the site (name, latitude & longitude, date designated, etc)
together with information on the species present (EC 1997a). e same form is also
used for SCIs.
Progress in designating sites was slow at rst (Fig. 1) and although there was no
agreed process to evaluate site proposals, most Member States have been subject to
legal proceedings for non implementation of the directive due to the slow rate of site
designation (EC 2006). In many cases the European Commission has used the Birdlife
‘Important Bird Areas’ (Heath et al. 2000) as a comparison.
e Habitats Directive has criteria for site selection given in Annex III and a sys-
tem whereby Member States propose potential sites to the European Commission for
approval and with a timetable for site proposal and subsequent designation. Although
the timetable has not been respected, and many of the EU15 were subject to legal
proceedings for failure to propose sites in time (Paavola 2004), it is clear from Figure 1
that progress has been much faster than for the Birds Directive sites.
In response to Article 4 of the directive, the Commission, together with the Mem-
ber States, and supported by the European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity (ETC/
BD) and its predecessors has developed the concept of biogeographical seminars to ex-
amine the proposals and to identify gaps in the proposed network. e directive makes
reference to biogeographical regions, which are based on maps of natural vegetation
but adjusted to t political and administrative boundaries (ETC/BD 2006). ese are
used as a framework for assessment with discussions held between all countries within
a region, or occasionally for a sub region (e.g. the Pyrenees or the Scandinavian moun-
tains, which are both part of a larger but fragmented Alpine region).
At a meeting held in Funchal, Portugal, in November 1994 to discuss the Maca-
ronesian region the concept of a ‘Reference List’ was developed and it was agreed that
seminars should be held even though the proposals were clearly incomplete using the
Macaronesian region as a pilot. e Reference List notes, which Annex I habitat types
Douglas Evans / Nature Conservation 1: 11–26 (2012)
14
and Annex II species require sites in a given biogeographical region per country. is is
not the same as a classic checklist as a species may be present but only as an occasional
visitor such that site designation is not possible.
e 1997 criteria also introduced the so called “20-60% guidelines” but this was
clearly to help focus discussion where most useful and was never meant to mean that
a given percentage of a population of a species or area of a habitat type must be pro-
posed. However, this has often been misunderstood to mean that at least 60% coverage
of the population of a species or area of a habitat was required, especially by NGOs
(e.g. WWF 2008).
Further biogeographical seminars were held for Macaronesia in 1996 and 1997
where the methods used later elsewhere (see below) were developed. Meetings held
for other regions before 1999 concentrated on agreeing the Reference Lists as very few
sites had been proposed by the Member States and, with a few exceptions of mostly
endemic species with one or very few known sites, most species and habitat types were
not suciently represented in the embryo network.
By 1999 most countries had proposed enough sites to allow an analysis of the net-
work species by species and habitat by habitat following the criteria agreed earlier and a
series of seminars for the other biogeographical regions started in April 1999 in Vargön,
Figure 1. Growth in the number of sites designated in the rst ten years of the Birds Directive (1982-
1992, red circles) and the Habitats Directive (1994-2004) blue squares). Note that some 10% of SPA and
5% of SCIs have no designation date in the database and that the EU grew from 12 MS in 1992 to 15 MS
in 1995 and 25 MS in 2004 (Source ETC/BD).
Building the European Union’s Natura 2000 network 15
Sweden, for the Boreal region and the Fennoscandian section of the Alpine region. For
the EU15 it was necessary to have two or more seminars per region as it was clear at
the rst meeting that the proposals were not sucient for all countries (e.g. for the rst
Atlantic meeting there were no German sites). However, the rst seminars identied
the habitats and species that clearly required additional sites and allowed a discussion
on the interpretation of some of the Annex I habitats (see Evans 2006, 2010).
e meetings were attended by representatives of the Member States, usually from
the Ministries of Environment and/or agencies responsible for nature conservation,
the European Commission, the ETC/BD and NGOs. A small number of experts
identied by the ETC/BD were also invited, ideally these are independent of both
the national authorities and the NGOs. is is not always possible in small countries
and some invited experts had given advice to national authorities but had not been
involved in the nal stages of site selection. At rst, only NGOs with an interest in
nature conservation were involved, with participation coordinated by the European
Habitats Forum (http://www.iucn.org/about/union/secretariat/oces/europe/places/
brussels/european_habitats_forum/) but from 2002 onwards NGOs representing land
owners and users also participated, coordinated by the European Landowners Organi-
sation (http://www.europeanlandowners.org/). e NGOs have played a major role in
implementing Natura 2000 (Weber and Christophersen 2002). Observers were also
invited to many seminars, especially from countries negotiating to join the EU who are
expected to have their lists of SCIs ready on the day of accession.
e crucial question for the biogeographical seminars was what coverage of a spe-
cies or habitat type was required in order to meet the obligations of the directive. For
very rare species or habitats, for example the Annex II plant Odontites granatensis,
which is endemic to a small area of the Sierra Nevada in Spain, it is clearly necessary
to have all known sites included in the network (although to be sure of long-term
survival ex-situ conservation may also be required). But for rare but widespread species
and habitats it is not so clear what proportion is required. Following discussions at the
Habitats Committee (a committee of Member State representatives established to as-
sist the Commission in implementing the directive) and its Scientic Working Group,
the Commission published criteria for the assessment of Member State proposals and
for approval of sites as SCIs (EC 1997b). is accepts that a case by case analysis will
be necessary but gives the following points to be taken into account during discussion:
• Comparisonbetweenthegeographicaldistributionofthesitessubmittedbythe
Member States for a given habitat type or species and its known distribution pat-
terns;
• Comparisonbetweentherangeofhabitatorspeciesvariationofthewholeofthe
series of proposed SCIs relative to the described ecological and genetic variations
of the habitats or species;
• Anassessmentofthetrendsofdistributionandabundanceofthehabitatsandspe-
cies related to natural and anthropogenic factors
Douglas Evans / Nature Conservation 1: 11–26 (2012)
16
For each seminar the ETC/BD produced a series of working documents, which
included maps of the sites proposed for each habitat or species, summary descriptions
of each site and a preliminary analysis for each species or habitat. is preliminary
analysis followed the 1997 criteria.
Many sources of information were used for this analysis. For species these included
atlases, both national and European, Redbooks and a search of the scientic literature.
Much less information was available for habitats, especially at the start of the seminar
series. It is clear that it had been intended that the Corine biotopes database (Moss and
Wyatt 1994) would be a major source of information but it proved to be of limited
use. Many habitats are based on plant communities so the phytosociological literature
was very useful, especially for variation in habitat types. However, in many cases it was
necessary to use the distribution of key plant species or other features as an indication
of probable distribution. For example, distribution maps of Pinus cembra and Larix de-
cidua give a good indication of the probable distribution of habitat type ‘9420 Alpine
Larix decidua and/or Pinus cembra forests’. Soil and geological maps also helped. is
type of approach was later formalised by the PeenHab project (Mücher et al. 2009).
Many countries published handbooks or other sources of information on the An-
nex I habitats and Annex II species, such as the French Cahiers d’Habitats series (Ben-
settiti 2001-2005), although many were published too late to be of use during the
seminars. e nature NGOs produced many useful reports, including shadow lists of
potential sites (see e.g. Irish Peatland Conservation Council 1999, WWF 2000, WWF
Austria & Oikos Inc. 2004). It was particularly dicult to obtain estimates of the area
of Annex I habitats present in each Member State and for the populations of some
less well known species, such as insects and bryophytes. In such cases discussion was
focused on ensuring a good coverage of distribution and variation.
Many habitat types show variation, often linked to environmental factors, such
as climate, soil type or altitude. For example ‘6230 Species-rich Nardus grasslands, on
siliceous substrates in mountain areas (and submountain areas in Continental Europe)’
has distinct lowland and upland forms (Galvánek and Janák 2008) and seminars have
ensured both forms are represented in the network. Although the species of Annex II
have genetic variability this is rarely known in any detail and it has been assumed that
a good geographical distribution of sites will capture any such variation. In some cases
dierences have been described at subspecies level and these can be taken into account,
for example the Annex II buttery Euphydryas aurinia, which has several described
subspecies and forms (van Helsdingen et al. 1996).
Habitats known to require management, often based on extensive agriculture
(Halada et al. 2011), such as hay meadows, have often been the subject of particular
attention, especially when there is a known decline in the recent past.
e last seminars for the EU15 were in 2003 for the Mediterranean and Bo-
real regions by which time all 15 Member States had made substantial proposals
(see Fig. 2) but still had gaps for certain habitats and species. Further progress has
been assessed through bilateral meetings between the Member States and the European
Commission, assisted by the ETC/BD. ese meetings are still continuing although
Building the European Union’s Natura 2000 network 17
mostly to discuss changes made to existing sites rather than the proposal of new sites;
changes include modications to site boundaries and the addition or deletion of habi-
tats or species to a given site following re-surveys.
ere have been independent assessments of the network but only for some groups
of species or habitats and often just in single countries. For example Verovnik et al.
(2010) examined the network in Slovenia from the perspective of butteries while
Jantke et al. (2010) examined the eectiveness of Natura 2000 for the conservation of
wetland species.
Site Designation
Following discussion species by species and habitat by habitat during the seminars and
subsequent bilateral meetings the sites themselves were examined following the 1997
criteria to exclude sites that do not qualify as SCIs and lists of accepted sites are pub-
lished in the Ocial Journal of the European Communities for each biogeographical
region. e rst ‘List of SCIs’ was adopted in 2001 (Macaronesia) and lists have now
been adopted for all regions. Relatively few proposed sites have been rejected, usually
as they host no Annex I habitats or Annex II species.
Figure 2. Growth of area (ha) proposed as SCI per MS from 1995 to present (Source ETC/BD).
Douglas Evans / Nature Conservation 1: 11–26 (2012)
18
Once sites have been included on a ‘Community List’ the Member States have six
years in which to formally designate the sites as SACs.
EU Enlargement
When the Birds Directive was adopted in 1979, the EU had nine MS but has since
grown to 27. At each enlargement the candidate countries have had the opportunity
to add habitats and species to the annexes of both directives, and for species of the
Habitats Directive to have exemptions (for example several countries have an exemp-
tion from Annex IV for Castor ber). Table 1 summarises the changes since the Habi-
tats Directive was adopted. When Austria, Finland and Sweden joined in 1995, only
Austria had agreed a full list of amendments and only one habitat type and one species
had been proposed by Finland and Sweden for the annexes of the Habitats Directive. A
complete list of additional habitats and species for Finland and Sweden was published
in 1997 (EC 1997c). Further additions were made in 2004 when 10 countries joined
the EU with the latest changes in 2007 when Bulgaria and Romania joined. ese
amendments followed some four years of negotiations with the ETC/BD giving scien-
tic advice to the European Commission. Further changes will probably be needed for
any future EU enlargement.
A second round of seminars started in May 2005 for the EU+10 and as these
countries mostly had substantial proposals only one seminar per region has been held.
is was due to an agreement that Natura 2000 sites should be identied by the date
of accession to avoid damage by EU funded projects, such as transport links. In Po-
land, the initial proposals were clearly inadequate due to political reasons (see Grodz-
inska-Jurczak and Cent 2010) and a bilateral meeting including all stakeholders was
Table 1. Changes in the number of habitats and taxa listed in the annexes of the Birds & Habitats Di-
rectives due to EU enlargement. e taxa are mostly species but also include subspecies and genera e.g.
Dianthus arenarius subsp. bohemicus, Alosa spp.
1992 1995 1997 2004 2007
a) Birds Directive
Annex I Birds 175 +7 -1 +13 194
182 181 † 194 ‡
b) Habitats Directive
Annex I
Habitats 169 +9 +20 +20 +13
178 198 218 231
Annex II taxa 633 +6 +68 +168 +22
639 707 875 897
† Phalacrocorax carbosinensis was removed from Annex I
‡ Alectoris graeca replaced A. graeca saxatilis & A. graeca whitaken previously listed
Building the European Union’s Natura 2000 network 19
held in 2010 following further site proposals. Following the accession of Bulgaria and
Romania a seminar was held in 2008 for all four biogeographical regions present. A
regularly updated list, with dates, of all seminars and bilateral meetings is available on
the ETC/BD website (http://bd.eionet.europa.eu/activities/Natura_2000/pdfs/His-
tory_of_the_biogeographical_process_2010.pdf).
Marine Natura 2000
When the rst seminars were held it was not clear if the Habitats Directive ap-
plied oshore and therefore the marine habitats and species were only assessed in
territorial waters (usually 12 nautical miles) during the seminar for the adjacent
biogeographical region. Following a court case in England in 1999 and a subse-
quent judgement by the European Court of Justice in 2005 it was agreed that the
two directives apply to all waters where Member States exercise sovereignty or
jurisdictional rights. For most Member States this means that the directives apply
to their Exclusive Economic Zones, which can extend 200 nautical miles from
their coasts (Evans et al. 2011). e Member States asked for guidance on applying
the Directives oshore and in March 2003 the Commission established a marine
working group, which published guidelines in 2007 (EC 2007). As it was clear that
previous assessments needed to be revisited a ‘Marine Reserve’ was introduced for
habitat types and species thought to occur oshore and Member States given more
time to identify and propose sites. By 2009 enough SCIs had been proposed to
hold a series of marine seminars with a rst meeting in Galway, Ireland, in March
2009. As the biogeographical regions are based on terrestrial vegetation they do
not form natural regions at sea and so marine regions based on the marine conven-
tions have been used for seminars and also for reporting under Article 17 of the
Habitats Directive. Although some countries have proposed signicant areas, in
general the marine component of the Natura 2000 network is far from complete
(Evans et al. 2011).
Site selection
When the Habitats Directive was being negotiated many Member States, especially
in NW Europe expected that their existing networks of protected areas would be suf-
cient for Natura 2000 and these existing sites (nature reserves, national parks etc.)
did form the starting point for site selection in most countries. However, as shown by
Figure 3, all countries have had to nd additional sites for Natura 2000 and this gure
understates the additional sites as in some countries designation under national legisla-
tion is often involved in site protection. For example, in the United Kingdom most
Natura 2000 sites are protected to a large degree due to being also designated as Sites of
Douglas Evans / Nature Conservation 1: 11–26 (2012)
20
Special Scientic Interest (SSSI) and sites identied as being necessary for Natura 2000
are usually also designated as SSSI – of 32 new SSSI in Scotland designated in 1996,
31 were designated in order to be part of Natura 2000 (information from Scottish
Natural Heritage sitelink http://gateway.snh.gov.uk/sitelink/index.jsp). In Scotland
many of the sites added to the national network were for rivers as these had previously
been under represented.
e proportion of each country included into Natura 2000 varies from 7% (Unit-
ed Kingdom) to 36% (Slovenia). Part of this variation is due to ecological dierences
with relatively few areas of nature conservation interest in urbanised and intensively
farmed areas, such as southern England or northern France, but also due to national
policies. For example, although the United Kingdom has a low proportion of its ter-
ritory as SPA or SCI, it does have a well developed system of planning control, which
means buer zones around the key areas of interest are less necessary.
National policy also inuences the size of sites, with some countries opting for few,
large sites and others for many small sites as shown for Spain and Germany in Figure
4. Large sites may be easier to administer and in some countries management may be
directed at a group of sites rather than at individual sites, as in France.
Although software tools such as Marxan (http://www.uq.edu.au/marxan/; Ball et
al. 2009) or Zonation (http://www.helsinki./bioscience/consplan/software/Zona-
tion/index.html; Moilanen and Arponen 2011) exist to help design optimal networks
of protected areas, it appears that they have not been used for Natura 2000. In many
countries funding from the EU LIFE programme helped with site selection, as with
the BioItaly project (Blasi 1996).
Figure 3. Natura 2000 and protected areas designated under national legislation (IUCN management
categories I to IV, Dudley 2008) (Source ETC/BD).
Note. e data from Luxembourg could not be used as it consisted of points, but not the required poly-
gons of the protected area. Only 50% of nationally designated sites in Spain have an IUCN management
category reported
Building the European Union’s Natura 2000 network 21
Conclusion
Although there have been considerable diculties, both scientic and political (Paavo-
la 2004, Keulartz and Leistra 2008), the network is close to complete on land but not
at sea and, given the current rate of proposing new marine sites, it seems unlikely that
the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 target that “Member States and the Commission
will ensure that the phase to establish Natura 2000, including in the marine environ-
ment, is largely complete by 2012” (EC 2011a) will be reached. e benets of the
Birds Directive have been demonstrated by Donald et al. (2007) who showed popula-
tion increases of endangered species in response to conservation measures but to date
there is no comparable published study on the Habitats Directive.
e lists of species and habitats has often been criticised and suggestions made for
changes (e.g. Evans 2006, Bergmeier et al. 2010) and some countries have had lists of
additional interests to help with site selection, such as Italy (Blasi 1996) and Greece
(Das et al. 1996). However, site designation can help conserve species not listed on
the annexes as shown for birds in Latvia (Opermanis et al. 2008) and for gypsophilous
plants in Spain (Martínez-Hernández 2011). Indeed the incidental protection of many
non listed species was one of the reasons to list habitats rather than just species as for
the annexes of the Berne Convention.
Site designation is just a rst step in conserving the habitats and species as most re-
quire appropriate site management, and there are obligations to protect sites from loss
and damage and to monitor the habitats and species listed on the annexes. Although
site management plans are not obligatory, they are recommended (EC 2011b) and in
some countries, such as France, are required by national law. Two recent publications
Figure 4. Percentage of sites in each size class (ha) of SCIs in Germany, Spain and the EU, marine sites
have been excluded. (Source ETC/BD).
Douglas Evans / Nature Conservation 1: 11–26 (2012)
22
concerning Greece and Romania (Apostolopoulou and Pantis 2009, Iojă et al. 2010)
suggest that the necessary administration is not in place in some countries.
e Commission, together with the Member States, NGOs and the ETC/BD, is
planning a series of seminars, organised by biogeographical regions, to discuss man-
agement of Natura 2000 sites. e rst meeting will be for the Boreal region and is
scheduled for 2012; it is expected to focus on a small number of habitat groups and
associated species.
As well as the site network, work towards Natura 2000 has also had other benets,
not least increased scientic study of the habitats and species listed on the annexes
including habitat mapping, in some cases of entire countries as in the Czech Republic
and Spain (Rivas-Martínez and Peans 2003, Härtel et al. 2009). Future challenges in-
clude ensuring the network allows for adaptation to environmental change, including
climatic change (Harrison et al. 2006, Vos et al. 2008).
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank past and present members of the ‘Natura 2000’ group at the
ETC/BD, in particular Carlos Romão, Juan-Manuel de Benito, Marie-Paule Hin-
dermeyer, Brian MacSharry, Otars Opermanis, and Zelmira Sipkova. Henri Jareux
helped by giving me access to archive material. e views expressed are those of the
author and should not be taken as the views of the EEA or the ETC-BD.
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