Assessing the Conservation Status of Alder-Ash Alluvial Forest and Atlantic Salmon in the Natura 2000 River Network of Cantabria, Northern Spain - River Conservation and Management - page 181

CHAPTER 16
Assessing the Conservation Status of
Alder-Ash Alluvial Forest and Atlantic
Salmon in the Natura 2000 River
Network of Cantabria, Northern Spain

Jose Barquın, B arbara Ondiviela, Marıa Recio, Mario Alvarez-Cabria,
Francisco J. Pe nas, Diego Fern andez, Laura Oti, Andres Garcıa, Cesar Alvarez and
Jose A. Juanes
IH-Cantabria, Universidad de Cantabria, Santander, Spain

Introduction

and loss of freshwater biodiversity have continued
to accelerate (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment,
2005; Dudgeon et al. , 2006).
Many countries and international organizations
still classify habitats and species according to their
risk of extinction, using criteria developed by the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature
(IUCN, 2001). Few attempts have been made to
apply this principle to wider biological communities
despite an increasing need to do so, particularly in
relation to conservation strategies underpinning
major legislation such as the European Habitats
Directive (Nicholson et al. , 2009). Establishing
the reasons for the decline and potential loss
of habitats and species is vital for establishing
priorities within conservation strategies and
management plans. A broader perspective, beyond
an exclusive focus on endangered species and
habitats, is therefore required (Karr, 1990). A
good example is improving how the conservation
status of habitats and species protected under
the Habitats Directive is assessed (European
Commission, 2006). This is because there can be
anomalies

A major aim of nature conservation is to
prevent the loss of habitats and the extinction
of species by maintaining and restoring biological
communities and their associated ecosystem
functions (Primack, 2008). To achieve this
successfully, a key requirement is the ability to
assess the integrity and functioning of ecosystems
under different environmental scenarios. During
the last 20 years major advances have been
made in assessing river ecosystem integrity and
establishing the impact of human activities (Karr,
1999; Bonada et al. , 2006; Poquet et al. , 2009;
Vaughan, 2010; Fern andez et al. , 2011). Several of
these assessment methods have been developed
in response to environmental legislation; good
examples are the Habitats Directive (HD; Council
of the European Communities, 1992) and Water
Framework Directive (WFD; Council of the
European Communities, 2000) in Europe and the
Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act in
the United States. Notwithstanding these legal

between current conservation status

obligations, habitat loss, ecosystem degradation