Semi-natural grassland as a source of biodiversity improvement
Today using our environment responsibly and developing a high quality environment means, above all, maintaining the existing species and habitats diversity and creating, wherever possible, new High Nature Value areas (HNVAs) as replacements of those eliminated through impacting human activities. In the last decades the agricultural intensification and the abandonment of land more difficult to cultivate have led to a strong biodiversity decrease of extensively or less intensively managed agri-ecosystems, mainly grasslands, with a High Nature Value (HNV). In Central Europe, the total biodiversity, of which the agricultural part is essential, has also decreased. Moreover, the urbanisation has also contributed to reduce the HNV areas and to create surfaces with vegetation strongly influenced by human activities.
Protection of biodiversity was first promoted by the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Convention on Biological Conservation and then by recent EU regulations. To achieve this goal the public and private institutions involved need the availability of native plant material, which is not sufficiently met in Central Europe. Grasslands in this area are usually established by sowing standard seed mixtures from the international seed market, which mostly contain non-native species or ecotypes. In addition, the practical implementation of ecological restoration methods is not as yet satisfactory and seeds of local provenance are seldom available on the market in the needed quantities.
In order to meet and overcome these obstacles the general aim of SALVERE is to contribute to the practical realisation of EU regulations regarding biodiversity by utilising the semi-natural grasslands as potential seed donor sites. The specific aims will be the improvement and transfer of the restoration techniques suitable for harvesting native plant seed from semi-natural grasslands and to establish new HNV areas. 