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Plant Invasions of Protected Areas in Europe: An Old Continent Facing New Problems

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Plant Invasions in Protected Areas

Part of the book series: Invading Nature - Springer Series in Invasion Ecology ((INNA,volume 7))

Abstract

Europe has a particularly long history of land protection measures, and is the region of the world with the largest number of protected areas, which has grown rapidly over the last decades. This was to a large extent due to the Natura 2000 programme of the European Union which focused on extending the existing network of legally protected areas with other habitats of conservation value. As a result, Europe has over 120,000 nationally designated protected sites (the most in the world) and 21 % of the continent area (1,228,576 km2) currently enjoys some form of legal protection. Despite these impressive statistics, the effectiveness of the existing network in protecting biodiversity is constrained by habitat fragmentation and other factors. Despite the generally high awareness of the importance of biodiversity protection in Europe, invasive alien species are not perceived as the most pressing problem by the public. This is in contrast with the fact that many of them have serious impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in protected areas. Among these, Ailanthus altissima, Fallopia taxa, Heracleum mantegazzianum, Impatiens glandulifera and Robinia pseudoacacia are considered as top invaders by managers of protected areas. Surprisingly, continent-wide rigorous data on the distribution and abundance of invasive alien species are lacking and there is an urgent need for collating checklists of alien species using standardised criteria to record their status. With the exception of very few regions such information is missing, or incomplete, based on varying criteria and scattered in grey literature and unpublished reports. To put the management on a more scientific basis the collection and curation of better data is an urgent priority; this could be done by using existing instruments of the EU as a convenient platform. As found by means of a web survey reported here, managers of protected areas in Europe are well aware of the seriousness of the problem and threats imposed by invasive plant species but are constrained in their efforts by the lack of resources, both staff and financial, and that of rigorous scientific information translated into practical guidelines.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A given area can be designated under several designations, often with different boundaries. By ‘site’ we mean each individual record of a given area under a specific designation type.

  2. 2.

    The Emerald Network, now under development as part of the Bern Convention, is conceptually similar to the Natura 2000 network, but it incorporates more countries. As the European Union is also a signatory to the Bern Convention, the Natura 2000 network can be considered as the contribution of the EU to the Emerald Network. The Emerald Network works as an extension to non-EU countries of Natura 2000. At present, non-EU countries engaged in the constitution of the Emerald Network are Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Iceland, Moldova, Montenegro, Norway, the Russian Federation, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (European Environment Agency 2012).

  3. 3.

    The degree of overlap between nationally designated PAs and Natura 2000 sites is variable; in some countries, as Malta, Estonia, Latvia, there is no overlap because there was no developed pre-existing national system of PAs (Gaston et al 2008). In other countries (e.g. Cyprus, Bulgaria, Denmark, Ireland) the overlap is more than 80 %. Other figures include, e.g.: Italy and France >40 %; Poland and Spain >60 %, Germany ~10 %, Czech Republic >20 % (source European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity – ETC/BD, 2009).

  4. 4.

    This may include also related species H. sosnowskyi and H. persicum (Jahodová et al. 2007).

  5. 5.

    This is confirmed by the analysis on PAs coverage per IUCN category (EEA 2012) that highlights that the most represented IUCN category by surface (about 50 %) in European PAs is the V, that is “… protected area where the interaction of people and nature over time has produced an area of distinct character with significant ecological, cultural and scenic value …” (IUCN, http\\www.iucn.org).

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Acknowledgements

We thank three anonymous reviewers for comments on the manuscript, and Dave Richardson for improving our English. PP and JP were supported by grant no. P504/11/1028 (Czech Science Foundation), long-term research development project no. RVO 67985939 (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic). PP was also supported by institutional resources of Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic, and acknowledges the support by Praemium Academiae award from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. We thank V. Andrić, A. Badré, P. Bauer, C. Binet, J. Bride, V. Buskovic, L. Carotenuto, B. Fritsch, C. Greaume, K. Guerbaa, B.J. Hutinec, G. Kupczac, A. Labouille, A. Pardey, A. Pringarbe, P. Smith and T. Strudwick for providing us the data for PAs, and Zuzana Sixtová for technical assistance. The survey on invasive species in European PAs, that provided key information for the present chapter, was made possible by the support of the Council of Europe, and by the help of many experts, protected areas staff, and organizations, including in particular Europarc, IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas, IUCN Regional Office for Europe, IUCN Med Office, the Group of Experts of the Bern Convention on Protected Areas and Ecological Networks.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Invasion Ecology, Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Průhonice, CZ 252 43, Czech Republic

    Petr Pyšek, Jan Pergl & Jan Wild

  2. Department of Ecology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, CZ 128 44, Viničná 7, Prague 2, Czech Republic

    Petr Pyšek

  3. ISPRA, Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, Via V. Brancati 48, I-00144, Rome, Italy

    Piero Genovesi

  4. Chair IUCN SSC Invasive Species Specialist Group, Rome, Italy

    Piero Genovesi

  5. ARP, Regional Parks Agency – Lazio Region, Via del Pescaccio 96, I-00166, Rome, Italy

    Andrea Monaco

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Correspondence to Petr Pyšek .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. South African National Parks, Centre for Invasion Biology Conservation Services, Skukuza, South Africa

    Llewellyn C. Foxcroft

  2. Department of Invasion Ecology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Institute of Botany, průhonice, Czech Republic

    Petr Pyšek

  3. Department of Botany and Zoology, Stellenbosch University Center for Invasion Biology, Stellenbosch, South Africa

    David M. Richardson

  4. ISPRA Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, and Chair IUCN SSC Invasive Species Specialist Group, Rome, Italy

    Piero Genovesi

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© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Pyšek, P., Genovesi, P., Pergl, J., Monaco, A., Wild, J. (2013). Plant Invasions of Protected Areas in Europe: An Old Continent Facing New Problems. In: Foxcroft, L., Pyšek, P., Richardson, D., Genovesi, P. (eds) Plant Invasions in Protected Areas. Invading Nature - Springer Series in Invasion Ecology, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7750-7_11

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