Most habitat's and species' assessments in German Natura 2000 sites reflect unfavourable conservation states

The Convention on Biological Diversity aims to protect 30% of the Earth’s land and marine surface to promote biodiversity. In the European Union, conservation areas are mainly placed under protection through the Habitats Directive. These so-called Natura 2000 sites currently cover 18.6% of Europe's land area. Obligatory status reports enable a broad-scale analysis of conservation states to investigate if biodiversity is in the favourable conservation status demanded by the directive and which factors may be inhibiting. With focus on Germany, we evaluated the conservation states of habitat types and species groups as assessed in standard data forms and related it to drivers commonly reported for the sites, e.g., land-use practices, protected area size and time since designation. Our results are based on assessments from 23% (1,049) of Germany’s Natura 2000 sites protected under the Habitats Directive and show that only 6% of habitats’ and 4% of species’ assessments report a favourable conservation status. A review of the reported drivers showed that most negative influences on Natura 2000 sites were attributed to agricultural and forestry activities, as well as natural system modifications, while for both land-use types also practices with positive impact were listed. For habitats, conservation status was better in Natura 2000 sites that were established earlier than later. For both habitats and species, more favourable conservation states were overall related to larger area sizes and the absence of direct land use (agriculture, forestry). Our results highlight that a high proportion of protected areas alone does not suffice to infer successes for biodiversity conservation when land-use activities continue to affect target species or their habitats. Increased conversation efforts for Natura 2000 areas will be required to meet the goals of the recently implemented EU Nature Restoration Law.