On Monday 25 March the workshop Monitoring methodologies of the EU Habitats Directive and their implementation in Montenegro was held in cooperation and in premises of the Montenegrin Ministry of Tourism, Ecology, Sustainable Development and Northern Region Development.

Biodiversity monitoring is an essential part of nature and biodiversity conservation. This workshop elaborated on legal requirements, methodological frameworks and relevant indicators in order to fulfil the reporting requirements of the EU Nature Directives and the upcoming Nature Restoration Law.

The workshop included various stakeholders and experts. Insights into the current monitoring system related to the Habitats Directive in Montenegro were provided by Dragan Roganovic from the Environment Protection Agency, while EU4Green expert Thomas Ellmauer (Umweltbundesamt) presented Monitoring and reporting according to the Habitats Directive in Austria. EU4Green co-project leader Laura Hohoff and Biodiversity expert Katharina Huchler spoke about the project as a whole and specific upcoming biodiversity activities.

The workshop was followed by two days of fieldwork at Skadar lake in Montenegro and at Bjeshket e Nemuna, Zalli i Rupes in Kosovo. With involvement of 15 biodiversity experts from different fields (i.e. birds, fish, habitats etc.) the field visit ensured that the understanding of the methodology is clear and consistent between all experts. This helped to eliminate potential misunderstandings early in the process and to reduce sampling bias.

After this activity, the 15 contracted experts will be able to carry out the next phases of the EU4Green Biodiversity fieldwork at their pilot site independently.

Work package of EU4Green connected to Biodiversity focuses on six pilot sites (one in each economy) that are protected areas, that might become proposed as Natura2000 sites, and host representative river ecosystems and their floodplains. The activities of the work package focus on the compilation of relevant data for nature protection in these pilot sites, especially under the EU Nature Directives.