Criteria voor de beoordeling van de lokale staat van instandhouding van de Vogelrichtlijnsoorten in Vlaanderen: Versie 2.0

The Habitats and Birds Directives are the cornerstones of Europe’s nature conservation policy, which is built around two pillars: the Natura 2000 network of protected sites on the one hand, and a system of direct species protection on the other. For each protected site, member states have to define conservation objectives by 2010 that pursue a favourable conservation status for all enlisted habitat types and species. To meet this obligation, Flanders has decided to draw up regional conservation objectives first and to translate them into objectives at the level of the individual site subsequently. These sites include the Special Areas of Conservation (SAC’s) and the Special Protection Areas (SPA’s), designated as part of the Habitats and Birds Directives.

This report provides a series of criteria and indicators to define the favourable conservation status for 57 species that are present in Flanders. These include 31 species of annex I of the Birds Directive and 28 species that meet the so-called 1% criterium for waterbirds. By means of these indicators, actual population status and habitat quality can be tested against well-considered, ecologically sound threshold values that define the favourable conservation status. The selection of the indicators and their threshold values used in the evaluation tables of this report is based on their capacity to cover the species’ ecology in an objective (i.e. based on national and international, scientific literature), unambiguous, practical, measurable and comprehensive way. Their relevance for the Flemish situation was taken into account as well.

This report is designed as an instrument to evaluate the local conservation status of the species in the protected sites.