Under the Habitats Directive (The Council of the European Communities: Council Directive 92/43/EEC of 21 May 1992 on the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora), Denmark has designated a total of 194 habitats to be included in a European network of Special Areas of Conservation (SAC's), Natura 2000. The designations are based upon the presence of 60 of the natural habitat types listed in Annex I of the Directive and approx. 44 of the species listed in Annex II which occur within the territory of Denmark and for the conservation of which the Community has a special responsibility.
The member states are obliged to monitor and assess the conservation status of these natural habitat types and species and to report their findings to the Community. To comply with these requirements, the Danish Forest and Nature Agency, the National Environmental Research Institute and the Danish county authorities have initiated a co-operative programme to provide and compile the data necessary to assess the conservation status of the natural habitat types and species concerned. The purpose of this report is to present the conservation status of the habitats and species in Denmark on the basis of the background data and information available. The report will be integrated as an annex into the first Danish national report in 2001. The report focuses on a total of 13 priority natural habitat types listed in Annex I and 79 species listed in Annexes II, IV and V of the Habitats Directive. Many of the natural habitat types and species concerned mainly occur in Central Europe, and Denmark frequently represents the northernmost boundary of their distributional range. On the other hand, many characteristic Danish species are not specified in the Directive lists. Hence, the results presented in this report should be considered as a status report in relation to the Habitats Directive and not as an assessment of the status of overall nature conservation interests in Denmark.

Status of natural habitat types

The report presents the very first assessment of the conservation status of Danish natural habitat types covered by the Habitats Directive. The assessment is based on mapping of the natural habitat types in the SAC's put forward by Denmark. The mapping provides information on the occurrence and extent of the natural habitat types and the factors having positive or negative impacts on their typical species. A total of 61 natural habitat types included in the Habitats Directive are considered to occur at present in Denmark. Thirteen of these are priority natural habitat types and the mapping has primarily focused on these priority types while the remaining types have been only partially surveyed. Consequently the assessment of conservation status covers the 13 priority natural habitat types.

The main conclusions of the assessment of the conservation status of the natural habitat types are:
1. The basic knowledge of the distribution, the typical species, and the structure and function of the natural habitat types is in general not sufficient to make a reliable assessment of their status.
2. The assessment of the conservation status depicts a nature conservation resource that has been, and continues to be seriously threatened by anthropogenic activities. For the 13 priority types, the conservation status is considered to be favourable for 2 habitats, uncertain for 6 habitats, unfavourable for 3 habitats, and unknown for 2 habitats.

The assessment must be considered as preliminary because precise conservation objectives for the natural habitat types have yet to be developed.

Status of species

In the Habitats Directive, the conservation status of a species is defined in terms of all the influences acting upon the species, which may affect the long-term distribution and abundance of its populations. Such an assessment requires systematically and continuously collected data in order to describe the status and development of the population of the species concerned as well as its natural range and habitat.

Systematic monitoring of particular species listed in the Annexes of the Habitats Directive has only been implemented in a few exceptional cases. Studies of species status and recent distribution have been carried out in a limited number of cases, but for the majority of species this report is based on historical and recent data gathered from scattered information sources. Thus, in general monitoring data relating to individual species are only available at an extensive geographical scale. The background data for the 79 species assessed in this report are therefore only considered to be satisfactory for 30 species whereas the data on the remaining 49 species were insufficient to enable an adequate assessment of their status and abundance.

In these circumstances and based on the data on the total occurrence and distribution of the species in Denmark, the conservation status of species has been assessed based on the following categories: Favourable conservation status: 14 species including 11 mammals, 1 amphibian, and 2 fish species.

Uncertain conservation status: 22 species including the only 2 priority species houting (fish) and hermit (beetle), 4 mammals, 1 reptile, 5 amphibians, 2 dragonflies, and 8 vascular plants.

Unfavourable conservation status: 17 species including 2 amphibians, 2 fish, 2 butterflies, 1 dragonfly, 2 beetles, 1 bivalve, 5 vascular plants, and 2 moss-es. Unknown conservation status: 13 species including 4 mammals, 1 reptile, 4 fish, 3 snails, and 1 mussel.

Disappeared: 13 species including 1 reptile, 2 fish, 3 butterflies, 2 dragonflies, 2 beetles, and 3 mosses.

The assessment is based on the preliminary classification of conservation status into these five categories. It is expected that these will be re-defined when conservation objectives for the species listed in the Habitats Directive have been established.

Bedes citeret: Pihl, S., Ejrnæs, R., Søgaard, B., Aude, E., Nielsen, K.E., Dahl, K. & Laursen, J.S.(2001): Habitat and Species Covered by the EEC Habitats Directive. A Preliminary Assessment of Distribution and Conversation Status in Denmark. By NERI Technical report no. 365, 121 p. The report is only available in electronic version. p. 1-49 (2850 KB), p. 50-110 (3487 KB), p. 111-121 (1518 KB). http://faglige-rapporter.dmu.dk

	Full report in pdf format (9220 KB)

2002-07-10