Important Plant Areas in the UK

"Brilliant work by Plantlife in promoting a network of Important Plant Areas. As the threats to our biodiversity increase, and particularly in the light of climate change, conservation must become more sophisticated. But identification of the best sites, followed by robust protection, has to remain at the core of conservation strategy. Safeguarding Important Plant Areas is a key step in the UK's response to the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation."- Graham Wynne, Chief Executive of the RSPB

Summer 2007 marked an important season for plant conservation in the UK as a network of Important Plant Areas (IPAs) was announced. Coordinated by Plantlife, a partnership of botanical societies, land managing organisations, research institutes and government conservation agencies came together to identify internationally important areas for plants across the UK. To date around 150 IPAs have been identified across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Identifying IPAs is the starting point for achieving Target 5 of the Convention on Biological Diversity's Global Strategy for Plant Conservation: the " protection of 50% of the world's most important areas for plant diversity assured by 2010." In the UK the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation is implemented through Plant Diversity Challenge – a new report available online gives an overview of progress with Plant Diversity Challenge and highlights the conservation of IPAs as one of the key challenges in the UK towards 2010.

IPAs in the UK have been identified, as elsewhere in Europe and across the globe, using scientifically agreed selection criteria and are based on the presence of internationally threatened species and/or habitats, and sites of exceptional botanical richness. At this stage of the process we have been able to identify the qualifying features, whilst the next phase will include mapping the core areas of interest and assessing how best to conserve IPAs. The qualifying ‘core’ features of IPAs cannot be conserved in isolation, indeed the IPA concept provides unique opportunity to look beyond site-based conservation to the development of landscape scale conservation which also help to address habitat fragmentation.

An online database holds information on IPAs across Europe. As we carry out more assessment on the UK IPA network and further populate the database, this information can be used to ensure that specialists, conservation stakeholders and decision makers have accurate, sound data on which to prioritise national and international conservation projects.

A number of summary IPA accounts and indicative maps are available here.

Plantlife would like to acknowledge and thank the following organisations for helping to identify IPAs in the UK:

British Bryological Society
Joint Nature Conservation Committee
British Lichen Society
Botanical Society of the British Isles
National Trust for Scotland
British Phycological Society
Natural England
British Pteridological Society
Natural History Museum
Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh
Countryside Council for Wales
Scottish Natural Heritage
National Trust
Northern Ireland’s Environment & Heritage Service
The Wildlife Trusts

For more information on IPAs in the UK please visit the online database or email ipa@plantlife.org.uk