Description
In Trentino 136 Sites of Community Interest (SCI) have been identified in accordance with the Habitats Directive, 135 of which have subsequently been designated as Special Areas of Conservation (SAC).
To find out which Special Areas of Conservation are present in your territory, go to the PROVINCIAL PROTECTED AREAS ARCHIVE: for each area a dedicated sheet is published.
The procedure for designating SACs follows an articulated process:
- each Member State identifies proposed SACs (pSic), i.e. sites hosting habitats and species that are threatened or rare at European level, listed respectively in Annex I and II of the Habitats Directive. In Italy, the identification of pSICs is the responsibility of the Regions and Autonomous Provinces, which transmit the data to the Ministry of the Environment;
- the Ministry verifies the completeness of the data before transmitting them to the European Commission;
- the Commission organises scientific seminars for each biogeographical region (the so-called biogeographical seminars) to evaluate the sites proposed by the states.
- If successful, the sites are designated as Sites of Community Interest (SCI);
- following the definition by the autonomous regions and provinces of site-specific conservation objectives and measures, the SCIs are designated as SACs by decree of the Ministry.
In Trentino, the process of transforming the 'Val Jumela' SCI, the last site defined following the discovery of some stations of Botrichium simplex, a Pteridophyta plant included in Annex 2 of the 'Habitats' Directive, into a SAC has not yet been completed.
SACs in Trentino often coincide with areas already identified as Provincial Nature Reserves.