Important Plant Areas

Issue

The world's plant diversity is disappearing at an alarming rate due to a wide range of reasons:

• Destructive development of natural resources
• Over consumption and over use of natural resources
• Climate change
• Spread of invasive alien species

As primary producers and the providers of ecosystem infrastructure, products and services, plants are fundamental to life on earth.

Definition

"Important Plant Areas (IPAs) are natural or semi-natural sites exhibiting exceptional botanical richness and/or supporting an outstanding assemblage of rare, threatened and/or endemic plant species and/or vegetation of high botanical value."
(Plantlife International)

Importance

Important Plant Areas (IPAs) do not have a site designation or protection status, but provide a framework for identifying and highlighting the very best sites for plants and fungi.

IPAs provides a unique opportunity to consider and select the best sites for plants and/or fungi in a broader context, and facilitate the development of landscape scale approaches to conservation. These selected sites can be used to support conservation actions and initiatives such as the protection, research and implementation of plant conservation policy.

IPAs in the European Plant Conservation Strategy

Target 2.14

"IPA promoted for inclusion in the Pan-European Biological and Landscape Diversity Strategy (PEBLDS) and National Biodiversity Action Plans, and promoted to support, inform and underpin international protected area networks"

Lead organisation Plantlife International

IPAs in the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation

Target 5

"Protection of 50% of the world's most important areas for plant diversity assured by 2010."

Lead organisation IUCN and Plantlife International

Developments

What are the most important areas for the protection of plant diversity? Even in a comparatively well-known region such as Europe the question is difficult to answer.

Experts in different taxonomic groups have different views, and there has not been any common understanding of criteria for its identification in the past.

Plantlife International developed the Important Plant Areas programme based on its mandate given in the EPCS. The objective is to provide much-needed information on the threat status and site protection for saving plants in Europe.

Plantlife International and Planta Europa are working hand-in-hand to implement the IPA approach in all European countries in the future.

IPA methodology

The identification of IPAs is based on three criteria:

1. Presence of threatened species: the site holds significant populations of one or more species that are of global or regional conservation concern
2. Presence of botanical richness: the site has an exceptionally rich flora in a regional context in relation to its biogeographic zone
3. Presence of threatened habitats: the site is an outstanding example of a habitat or vegetation type of global or regional plant conservation and botanical importance

For more information on the identification methodology, please see the IPA website, which gives concise information for botanists and plant conservation experts.

Projects

IPA identification has proved an excellent tool to boost plant conservation on a national level. It also helps different players such as governmental agencies and NGOs work together more effectively and establish strong links between each other. In a vast range of European countries, IPA identification and protection projects are currently under development or have even been carried out successfully, for example in:

Central and eastern Europe

A project for the implementation of IPAs in Belarus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland, Romania, Russia and Slovenia for the period of 2002-2005. 796 IPAs were identified covering 14,739,174 ha.
Read more about IPAs in central and eastern Europe

South-east Europe

Starting in February 2006, this project aims to implement IPAs in the Balkans: Bulgaria, Croatia and Montenegro. The project encourages cross-border conservation projects and includes a small-scale capacity building programme for members of the conservation community in the region.
Read more about IPAs in south-east Europe

Turkey

Turkey was the first country to implement a national inventory of identification of IPA sites. The project report was published in 2004 in Turkish and identifies 122 IPAs. It also includes the botanical, geographical and geological characteristics of the regions.
Read more about IPAs in Turkey

United Kingdom

A first draft shortlist of IPAs in the United Kingdom was produced and consulted on during 2005. Plantlife is now working with partners in the UK to revise this list by the end of this year.
Read more about IPAs in the United Kingdom

If you are aware of any additional IPA projects being implemented in Europe, please contact the Planta Europa Secretariat, providing a one to three sentence summary and a website link where available, so that these activities can be added to the list above.

"The identification of IPAs in Romania offered the opportunity to update information of threatened species and habitats and to conclude a list of candidate sites for the Natura 2000 network. It was a chance to develop an equal scientific position, as a necessary background to the international compatibility of knowledge."
Prof. Dr. Anca Sarbu, University of Bucharest - Association of Romanian Botanical Gardens (AGBR).