How to define and identify the “Low Hanging Fruits?”

Santtu Kareksela

METZO II -project

Metsähallitus, Parks & Wildlife Finland

Eurosite annual meeting

Natura 2000 Biogeographic Process Boreal Region meeting

Haltia, 27.9.2017

“The Commission has proposed in 2015 the idea of developing a strategic

and operational plan on how to achieve FCS1 as part of the biogeographical process. One of the proposals was to facilitate cooperation among Member States in the same biogeographic region on species and habitats for which

improvements could be reached comparatively ‘easier’ than for others -hence the image of a ‘low hanging fruits’. Through such cooperation

progress towards Target 1 of the Biodiversity Strategy should be accelerated, i.e. reaching measureable improvement of conservation status.

- Low Hanging Fruits Methodology

Low Hanging Fruits Methodology

Developing a method to identify ‘Low hanging fruits’ and testing it on the example of the Boreal Region (in preparation for the Boreal Natura 2000 seminar in October 2016)

Working towards Favorable Conservation Status of Habitats and Species of Community Interest

How to show progress to guarantee funding? Social fruitfulness!

So what are low hanging fruits?

And what have they got to do with our habitats?

Two main features

• Fruitful

o Delivering something (more than others?)

• Hanging lowo Fast to achieve effects (defined by fruitfulness)? Cheap to achieve?

Possibilities to act? -> Easy to achieve?

o Short-term vs long-term goals

Double filter

Fruitfulness of habitats with respect to biodiversity targets

Can be measured on different levels

• Social fruitfulness

• Ecological fruitfulness

• Different spatio-temporal scales?

DEFINED BY THE PROBLEM!

GLOBAL LONG-TERM PERSISTENCE OF BIODIVERSITY?

Ecological effectiveness!

• State of the habitat

▪ If high CS then effective improvement may be harder to achieve

• Size of the habitat

▪ If the size of the habitat is vast then effective improvement may be harder to achieve

Hanging low

• What makes some fruits to hang high?

o Costs

▪ Huge difference in how much money different habitats require if managed or restored

o Social restrictions

▪ Significant improvement of certain habitats may require actions on privately owned lands, where we don’t have a mandate to do actions

ACTUALLY A CONTINUOUS MEASURE – NEED TO

BALANCE BETWEEN “FRUITFULNESS” AND “HEIGHT”

Hanging low but far? The effect of spatial scale

Finnish perspective or EU biogeographic priorities

Building a simple model from the data in hand

Finnish / European example

Building a simple model from the data in handFinnish / European exampleStage 1

Simple ecological effect: relative increase in area ->

Area of a habitat that can realistically be improved (in Finland)

/

total area of the habitat in EU(27)

Rough model, still in progress!

Building a simple model from the data in handFinnish / European exampleStage 2

Considering the ”total state of the habitat”: multiply with conservation status (CS) ->

Area of a habitat that can realistically be improved

/

total area of the habitat in EU(27) * CS (0-1)

Rough model, still in progress!

Building a simple model from the data in handFinnish / European exampleStage 3

Considering the state of the habitat that can realistically be improved: relative increase in area * amount of change ->

Area of a habitat that can realistically be improved * relative improvement per area

/

total area of the habitat in EU(27) * CS (0-1)

Rough model, still in progress!

Building a simple model from the data in handFinnish / European exampleStage 4

Considering the the costs: € / km2 of the improvement action->

Area of a habitat that can realistically be improved * average improvement per area

/

total area of the habitat in EU(27) * CS (0-1) * € / km2

Now covering quite many essential elements!

Rough model, still in progress!