Resource description:
Freshwater ecosystems across Europe are under severe pressure from habitat degradation, pollution, and river fragmentation. A recent EU-wide spatial analysis covering European Union Member States and the United Kingdom reveals that restoration needs are widespread across European river networks. Despite decades of environmental policy under the Habitats Directive and the Water Framework Directive, large portions of freshwater habitats and river systems remain in unfavourable ecological condition.
However, the implementation of the Nature Restoration Regulation (NRR) creates a timely opportunity to scale up restoration efforts and address these challenges. By supporting coordinated, landscape-scale restoration planning, this new regulation can help Member States close policy implementation gaps, restore ecosystem functioning, and improve biodiversity outcomes across European freshwater environments.
Author/Contact:
Gonçalo Duarte1 , Angeliki Peponi1 , António Faro1 , Tamara Leite1 , Pedro Segurado1 , Florian Borgwardt2, Annette Baattrup-Pedersen3, Sebastian Birk4, Teresa Ferreira1 , Paulo Branco1
(1 Forest Research Centre, Associate Laboratory TERRA, School of Agriculture, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal, 2 BOKU University, Austria, 3 Department of Biology, Aarhus University, Aarhus C, Denmark, 4 Faculty of Biology, Aquatic Ecology, and Centre for Water and Environmental Research, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany)