Protected areas
Protected areas in Europe - an overview
All around the world, human activities pose a severe threat to the remaining natural heritage. Therefore, it is essential to protect intact ecosystems and landscapes, including their diversity of species and habitats.
European protected areas increased in the last decades, covering over 1.84 million km² of land and sea. With an area of just over 1 million km², the central driver behind this achievement is the Natura 2000 network. On national level, countries exhibit quite distinct approaches in protected area designations and priority setting.
While the number of terrestrial protected areas in Europe is very high (over 130 000), their average size is quite low in comparison to other regions of the world. This largely reflects the high degree of fragmentation arising from agriculture, transport and urban development in Europe.
Due to its high landscape fragmentation, European protected areas are in special need for targeted transboundary connectivity. Compared to other regions of the world, European protected areas already show particularly high connectivity, however, more action is necessary to achieve a free flowing nature network for Europe.
Many European habitats and species as well as all birds naturally occurring in Europe are covered by the EU Birds and Habitats Directives. As one its the central objectives, the Natura 2000 network aims to protect comprise these 233 habitats, 1 389 non-bird species and the over 460 wild birds.
Adequate site management and targeted measures are key factors for successful conservation. Current analyses show, however, that while protection is increasingly secured on paper, the progress on improving the management and assessing the effectiveness of measures has been rather low.
The protection of European nature has advanced substantially in the past years. Ongoing shortcomings involve the protection of offshore waters and some ecosystem types as well as the implementation of effective management plans and its monitoring. Thus, ambitious action is needed to achieve the targets to 2030 set by the EU and the CBD