European ecological network Natura 2000

(fragment of the book "Nature protection in military areas. Restoring the natural habitats of the Błędowska Desert”, Wojciech Mróz, Kraków, 2017)

The Natura 2000 European ecological network is a network of protected areas which all European Union Member States are obliged to designate. They are established on the basis of the Habitats Directive (Council Directive 92/43/EEC on the conservation of natural habitats and wild fauna and flora) and the Birds Directive (Council Directive 79/409/EEC on the conservation of wild birds), the two most important legal tools for protecting biodiversity in the territory of the European Union. The network consists of two subsystems: Special Bird Protection Areas (OSOP) and Special Habitat Conservation Areas (SOOS) (Makomaska-Juchiewicz 2011).

Bird areas are established to protect endangered bird species and their habitats. These are species listed in Annex I of the Birds Directive and species of regularly occurring species of migratory birds outside this annex, forming concentrations at different periods of their life cycle.

Habitat areas are established to protect the types of natural habitats listed in Annex I of the Habitats Directive and the habitats of species listed in Annex II of this directive.   
A natural habitat is understood as a land or water area, distinguished on the basis of geographical, abiotic and biotic features, completely natural or semi-natural. The determinants of most types of habitats, facilitating their identification in the field, are plant communities. Listed in Annex I DS and described in the so-called According to the Interpretation Manual of European Habitats, habitat types are habitats recognized as endangered within the territory of the EU or typical of biogeographical regions distinguished in this territory.   
The species of animals and plants whose habitats require protection in the network are those that are considered endangered, rare or requiring special attention in the EU territory due to the specific nature of their habitats. The habitat of a species is understood as an area where a species occurs at any stage of its biological cycle.

In Poland, works on the construction of the Natura 2000 network have been ongoing since 1999, and the first areas were reported by Poland in 2004, when our country joined the European Union. It should be noted, however, that the very process of implementing this network is very dynamic and continues to this day. In 2006-2014, the Institute of Nature Conservation of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Kraków, commissioned by the Chief Inspectorate for Environmental Protection, developed and tested a methodology for monitoring terrestrial natural habitats, as well as individual plant and animal species listed in Annexes II and IV of the Habitats Directive. At the same time, in those years, a bird monitoring system was also developed, for which special protection areas for birds (so-called "bird areas") are created.   
The process of managing the Natura 2000 network in Poland, as well as the development of planning documents enabling its protection, has undoubtedly been significantly streamlined by the creation of the General Directorate for Environmental Protection, which was established under the Act of 3 October 2008 on providing information on the environment and its protection, public participation in environmental protection and environmental impact assessments. At the same time, 16 Regional Directorates for Environmental Protection were established, whose seats were located in provincial capitals.

The next step in creating the Natura 2000 network was to determine the procedures for creating planning documents. It was agreed that plans for conservation tasks (valid for 10 years) and protection plans (every 20 years) will be created for Natura 2000 areas. In practice, almost exclusively protection task plans (PZO) are developed. In principle, these documents are created in a relatively short time and do not always cover all the knowledge about the objects of protection and protective measures. For example, one of the activities may also be supplementing the state of knowledge. The most important thing is that even in the face of incomplete data, the site manager can take effective action to maintain or improve the conservation status of natural habitats and species habitats. It is also very important that PZOs are created in close cooperation with all stakeholders of a given area, who form the so-called Local Cooperation Teams, which have access to the entire planning process, long before the final version of the plan is adopted. Protection task plans have the status of acts of local law and are established by order of the Regional Director for Environmental Protection.   
At present, the Polish Natura 2000 network includes 145 bird areas (SPA) and 849 habitat areas. Land areas, both birds and habitats, cover a total area of nearly 1/5 of the country's land area (data based on the website: natura2000.gdos.gov.pl).   
Natura 2000 areas in Poland are designated at the level of 3 biogeographical regions: Alpine, Continental and Baltic. The Alpine region in Poland includes the Carpathians with part of their foothills, while the Alpine region - the remaining land part of our country.