Regional Mountain Conference

The European Biodiversity Strategy stipulates that Member States should place 30% of their land and marine areas under protection and 10% under strict protection. Member States are called upon to submit information on the status of existing protected areas and a list of proposals for improving and expanding the network of protected areas to the European Commission. Austria has incorporated the European targets into its national biodiversity strategy, but has not yet submitted a pledge report to the European Commission. Around 29% of Austria’s land area is under some form of protection, with approximately 3% under strict protection. The overlap between different categories of protected areas makes it difficult to assess which areas are actually effectively protected for biodiversity conservation and how suitable they are for contributing to the 30/10 target.

The European Commission and IUCN have defined criteria for the quality of protected areas, but no such criteria exist for Austria. The study presented in the conference lecture, commissioned by WWF Austria and conducted by E.C.O. Institute for Ecology, addresses this issue. It provided the methodological basis and criteria for assessing the suitability of existing protected areas in the Austrian Alps as a contribution to the objectives of the European Biodiversity Strategy. To this end, existing collections of methods and evaluation systems (e.g. IUCN Greenlist) were analysed. The criteria relevant to the specific issue were adopted and further developed. The result is an evaluation framework that allows for a quick initial assessment without the need for time-consuming data research.

The study evaluated 203 existing protected areas in Austria. The results suggest that only a small proportion of them meet European standards for modern and efficient protected area management. In contrast, the vast majority of the areas examined require significant action if they are to contribute to the objectives of the European Biodiversity Strategy. The limitations of the assessment procedure were particularly evident where there was insufficient publicly available information. Applied to the whole of Austria, this could therefore reveal not only an initial assessment of Austria’s contribution to the biodiversity targets, but also the relevant data deficits.