European Red List of Habitats

Aiming at evaluating the progress and the fulfillment of the goals of the European Strategy on Biodiversity, the European Commission proceeded to publish the first European Red List of Habitats.

The second volume of the publication contains the assessment of  233 natural and semi-natural terrestrial and wetland habitat types. The results of the assessment are presented for the 28 countries of the European Union (EU 28) and for an expanded area that also includes Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and the non-EU Balkan countries (EU 28+).

The results of the assessment are presented collectively and by individual category of habitats (e.g. grasslands, wetlands, forests). Furthermore, there are informative factsheets on every individual habitat type, presenting information on the physiognomy, geographical distribution, pressures and threats, trends, conservation and management measures and other useful information.

For the assessment of the habitat types, five criteria were used. Two of them regard to spatial parameters (trends of declining geographical distribution, restricted distribution), two regard to functional procedures (degradation of biotic and abiotic attributes), while one criterion integrates threats and pressures in a model that estimates the likelihood of future “collapse”.

The threat categories follow the logic of the Red List of Endangered Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with the difference of, instead of the extinction of a species, the term “collapse” is used for the ecological processes of a habitat type.

Almost 1/3 of the European terrestrial and wetland habitat types are characterized as threatened, being classified in the categories Critically Endangered, Endangered or Vulnerable. The largest percentages of threatened habitats  are among mires and bogs (85%), wetlands (46%) and coastal (46%) habitat types. Forests, heaths and sparse vegetation hold the lowest percentages.

Among the main pressures faced by the above habitat types are agricultural extensification, urbanisation and modification of natural systems, such as that of the hydrological conditions.

From the total of 233 terrestrial and wetland habitat types assessed in the present publication, 42 concern forest ecosystems and 12 of them are characterized as threatenend  (two Endangered and 10 Vulnerable). Regarding the rest, 10 have been assessed as Nearly Threatened, 19 as Least Concerned, while one type the assessment was not possible due to lack of data.

The publication, the habitat types factsheets as well as supportive and informative material are available at the webpage of the European Commission .

Images source: European Commission