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Background Wind energy farms have become a popular solution to produce green energy worldwide. Their development within protected areas has increased dramatically in the past decade, and the effects on the rare, endemic and threatened plant species (i.e., protected plant species), essential for habitat conservation and management, are little known. Only a few studies directly quantify the impacts of wind energy farms on them. Our study analyzes the impact of wind energy farms on rare, endemic, and threatened plant species in steppic habitats and their recovery potential over a ten-year period on a wind energy farm within the Dealurile Agighiolului Natura 2000 site (Dobrogea Region, SE Romania). Methods We surveyed the rare, endemic, and threatened plant species within a radius of approximately 50 m around each of the 17 wind towers during the wind farm operational phase. We selected 34 plots to allow the investigation of two types of areas: (1) a disturbed area overlapping the technological platform, where the vegetation was removed before construction, and (2) an adjacent undisturbed area. To understand the effects of the wind energy farm on the rare, endemic, and threatened plant species diversity and the differences between the disturbed and undisturbed areas, we calculated under both conditions: (1) plant species richness; (2) sample-size-based rarefaction and extrapolation with Hill numbers parameterized by species richness; (3) non-metric multidimensional scaling of Jaccard dissimilarity index; (4) functional diversity; (5) beta-diversity (including replacement and nestedness of species). Results As a result of the disturbances caused by the wind energy farm’s development, we identified a sharp contrast between the diversity of rare, endemic, and threatened plants inhabiting disturbed and undisturbed areas near the wind towers. Our research showed that less than 40% of the total inventoried rare, endemic, and threatened species colonized the disturbed sites. Species turnover within undisturbed plots was higher than disturbed plots, implying that the plant community’s heterogeneity was high. However, a higher richness in rare, endemic, and threatened plant species was found in the plots around the wind towers in grasslands of primary type. Sample-size-based rarefaction and extrapolation with Hill numbers by observed species richness indicated an accurate estimation of species richness in disturbed habitats, demonstrating that recovery after wind energy farm construction was incomplete after ten years of low-intensity plant restoration and conservation activities. Thus, we consider that operating activities must be reconfigured to allow the complete recovery of the communities with rare, endemic, and threatened plant species.

The European Union strives to increase protected areas of the EU terrestrial surface to 30% by year 2030, of which one third should be strictly protected. Designation of the Natura 2000 network, the backbone of nature protection in the EU, was mostly an expert-opinion process with little systematic conservation planning. The designation of the Natura 2000 network in Romania followed the same non-systematic approach, resulting in a suboptimal representation of invertebrates and plants. To help identify areas with very high biodiversity without repeating past planning missteps, we present a reproducible example of spatial prioritization using Romania9s current terrestrial Natura 2000 network and coarse-scale terrestrial species occurrence. We used 371 terrestrial Natura 2000 Sites of Community Importance (Natura 2000 SCI), designated to protect 164 terrestrial species listed under Annex II of Habitats Directive in Romania in our spatial prioritization analyses (marine Natura 2000 sites and species were excluded). Species occurrences in terrestrial Natura 2000 sites were aggregated at a Universal Traverse Mercator spatial resolution of 1 km2. To identify priority terrestrial Natura 2000 sites for species conservation, and to explore if the Romanian Natura 2000 network sufficiently represents species included in Annex II of Habitats Directive, we used Zonation v4, a decision support software tool for spatial conservation planning. We carried out the analyses nationwide (all Natura 2000 sites) as well as separately for each biogeographic region (i.e., Alpine, Continental, Pannonian, Steppic and Black Sea). The results of spatial prioritization of terrestrial Natura 2000 vary greatly by planning scenario. The performance of national-level planning of top priorities is minimal. On average, when 33% of the landscape of Natura 2000 sites is protected, only 20% of the distribution of species listed in Annex II of Habitats Directive are protected. As a consequence, the representation of species by priority terrestrial Natura 2000 sites is lessened when compared to the initial set of species. When planning by taxonomic group, the top-priority areas include only 10% of invertebrate distribution in Natura 2000. When selecting top-priority areas by biogeographical region, there are significantly fewer gap species than in the national level and by taxa scenarios; thusly, the scenario outperforms the national-level prioritization. The designation of strictly protected areas as required by the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 should be followed by setting clear objectives, including a good representation of species and habitats at the biogeographical region level. The planning exercise uses 371 terrestrial Natura 2000 Sites of Community Importance (Natura 2000 SCI), designated to protect 164 terrestrial species listed under Annex II of Habitats Directive in Romania. Species occurrences in terrestrial Natura 2000 and Natura 2000 sites were aggregated at a Universal Traverse Mercator spatial resolution of 1 km2. To identify priority terrestrial Natura 2000 sites for species conservation, and to explore if the Romanian Natura 2000 network sufficiently represents species included in Annex II of Habitats Directive, we used Zonation v4, a decision support software tool for spatial conservation planning. We carried out the analyses nationwide (all Natura 2000 sites) and separately for each biogeographic region (i.e., Alpine, Continental, Pannonian, Steppic and Black Sea). The performance of national-level planning of top priorities is low. On average, when considering 10% of the landscape of Natura 2000 sites as protected, 20% of the distribution of species listed in Annex II of Habitats Directive are protected. As a consequence, the representation of species by priority terrestrial Natura 2000 sites is reduced when compared to the initial set of species. When planning by taxonomic group, the top-priority areas include only 10% of invertebrate distribution in Natura 2000. When selecting top-priority areas by biogeographical region, there are significantly fewer gap species than in the national level and by taxa scenarios; thus, the scenario outperforms the national-level prioritization. The designation of strictly protected areas as required by the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 should be followed by setting clear targets for the representation of species and habitats at the biogeographical region level.

An important step in managing invasive species is determining the factors responsible for their current and potential distribution, especially when species distribution is climatically determined like in Reynoutria taxa case. The main aim of this paper was to integrate all available distribution data of the Reynoutria taxa in SE Europe and to predict in which habitats and along which corridors its future spread can be expected. Distribution data of the Reynoutria taxa were obtained from extensive field studies in the period from 2006 to 2016, as well as from the literature and herbarium sources. A total of 4081 localities in Serbia and the Kosovo region, Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria and Romania have been recorded, most frequently in riparian and human-made habitats. Ecologically suitable ranges for the Reynoutria taxa were predicted using the MaxEnt program and 19 bioclimatic variables which were derived from the WorldClim data set. Results of this study showed that the most frequent Reynoutria taxa in SE Europe are R. japonica var. japonica and hybrid R. × bohemica. The most suitable geographical areas for R. japonica and R. sachalinensis are mostly located in the north, while for R. × bohemica the central part of SE Europe is suitable. The precipitation of the warmest quarter had a high influence on the potential distribution modelling of these closely related species. Potential distribution modelling revealed R. × bohemica’s high temperature tolerance in different seasons with high durability of drought (up to 60 mm per year less precipitation than parental species). Moreover, this research predicts which areas are most likely to be invaded, and makes suggestions where to focus management efforts for survey and removal of these invaders, especially in protected areas. According to the future climate analysis R. japonica and R. × bohemica could expand their range in riparian habitats up to 30–40%. Consequently, invasion in Slovenia’s and Croatia’s rivers requires urgent preventative measures. This study provides empirical evidence that these plants could become widespread throughout SE Europe within 25 years under the current trend and emphasizes that regionally specific management plans should be implemented to prevent further spread of these taxa.

Of the 37 species of the European Union concern eight are already present and two present a future potential risk for Romania. This paper brings updated information regarding these species in Romania. The presence of eight invasive alien species of concern to the European Union have already been recorded in Romania: two plant speciesCabomba carolinianaandHeracleum sosnowskyi, two crustaceansOrconectes limosusandEriocheir sinensis, two fish speciesPseudorasbora parvaandPerccottus glenii, one reptileTrachemys scriptaand one mammalMyocastor coypus. Other two species of Union concern (Lithobates catesbeianusandProcyon lotor) may soon become invaders in Romania. We emphasize the urgent need to assess their current distribution and impact or potential to establish and possible impact at national level.

International audience; The emergence of renewable energy infrastructures calls for a better understanding of their impact on biodiversity. The aim of the present study was to investigate in a mountain region the impact of a wind turbine on plant communities in their vicinity. A field survey was conducted in a wind farm situated in the Southern Romanian Carpathians, five years after the turbines were installed. We tested for the effects of the presence of the turbine and the distance to the turbine on plant species richness, on five plant ecological indicators and on the quality of the pastures. Overall, 33 plant species belonging to 16 families were recorded, and among them 21 were recorded in both the presence and the absence of wind turbine. The presence of a turbine did not affect the structure of the plant community, as the majority of the plots exhibited similar plant species richness and composition. Finally, the values of the ecological indicators and the pasture quality were not altered by the presence of the turbine. Such analyses could be extended over longer time periods so as to capture potential long-term effects and by integrating other environmental factors such as microclimatic conditions or soil properties.

International audience; To better manage invasive populations, it is vital to understand the environmental drivers underlying spatial variation in demographic performance of invasive individuals and populations. The invasive common ragweed, Ambrosia artemisiifolia, has severe adverse effects on agriculture and human health, due to its vast production of seeds and allergenic pollen. Here, we identify the scale and nature of environmental factors driving individual performance of A. artemisiifolia, and assess their relative importance. We studied 39 populations across the European continent, covering different climatic and habitat conditions. We found that plant size is the most important determinant in variation of per-capita seed and pollen production. Using plant volume as a measure of individual performance, we found that the local environment (i.e. the site) is far more influential for plant volume (explaining 25% of all spatial variation) than geographic position (regional level; 8%) or the neighbouring vegetation (at the plot level; 4%). An overall model including environmental factors at all scales performed better (27%), including the weather (bigger plants in warm and wet conditions), soil type (smaller plants on soils with more sand), and highlighting the negative effects of altitude, neighbouring vegetation and bare soil. Pollen and seed densities varied more than 200-fold between sites, with highest estimates in Croatia, Romania and Hungary. Pollen densities were highest on arable fields, while highest seed densities were found along infrastructure, both significantly higher than on ruderal sites. We discuss implications of these findings for the spatial scale of management interventions against A. artemisiifolia.