Important Plant Areas in south-east Europe

South-east Europe is one of the most diverse regions in Europe for wild plants and their habitats, which occur in a mosaic of mountains, forest, grasslands, river gorges, lakes and coastlines. This beautiful nature is well known by the tourism industry too, which makes it a potential threat to wild plants and their habitats in the Balkans.

In February 2006, Plantlife International and its Dutch partner NGO "FLORON" received funding from the BBI Matra fund of the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality for a three year programme entitled The Planta Europa Network and the Important Plant Areas (IPA) programme in south-east Europe. The three partner countries, were Bulgaria, Croatia and Montenegro. In 2007 Macedonia (FYR) also joined the programme enabled by generous funding from the MAVA foundation. All of these countries had completed preliminary work on IPA identification supported by the Regional Environment Centre's (REC) "Plants along the border" project in 2003 and 2004, and the results were incorporated in the report of IPA in central and eastern Europe.

This current programme will build upon those experiences and work with specialists and stakeholders in the partner countries to produce and publicise a national IPA inventory. Croatia and Bulgaria have just completed extensive work on their national red lists, which will facilitate the identification process substantially. The IPA identification will be beneficial for the implementation of PEBLDS, PEEN and the EU Habitats Directive and Natura 2000 network in the partner countries.

The exciting new element of this project is its focus on developing plant conservation projects on some of the IPA identified. Each country will develop a plant conservation pilot project on one IPA site test methodologies for IPA conservation and management. Plantlife International will also be developing a small scale capacity building programme for members of the conservation community in the region that will be called Skill Share for Wild Plants.

Plantlife International and the partner organisations will work closely with Planta Europa to strengthen plant conservation in this region.