What happened
Doğa Derneği is coordinating an update of Türkiye’s Important Nature Areas inventory, a project launched in 2023 and planned for completion in 2029. The work will document changes in the country’s natural environment over the past two decades, including losses and newly recorded findings.
Early results identify 7,144 locations of importance for biodiversity across nine species groups. The assessment covers plants, dragonflies and damselflies, butterflies, freshwater fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, birds and, newly, molluscs. Twelve specialists worked on the initial data collection over two years.
A national coordination workshop in Ankara brought together representatives from 12 civil-society organisations, academics from 11 universities and specialists from three directorates within the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Participants considered how current evidence could feed into conservation policy, address threats to Important Nature Areas and support cooperation between academia, public institutions and civil society.
Why it matters
The updated dataset is intended to identify habitats supporting endemic, threatened, vulnerable or otherwise distinctive species. It could provide an evidence base for selecting areas of global biodiversity importance and for shaping Türkiye’s conservation policies.
The material does not set out new compliance duties or deadlines for businesses. Its stated policy relevance includes possible use in national databases, conservation strategies and area-based conservation measures linked to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’s target for 30% protected areas.
Background
Doğa Derneği published Türkiye’s first Important Nature Areas inventory in 2006. It combined evidence on plants, dragonflies, butterflies, freshwater fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, and identified 305 areas. The Important Nature Areas approach was recognised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as a global standard for identifying priority sites in 2016.
What's next
The national coordination group is intended to support the incorporation of findings into national datasets and conservation planning, while aligning the work with international standards. By 2029, the inventory is expected to move from a fixed written publication to an online system that can be updated as new information becomes available.
