Publication Details |
| Category | Text Publication |
| Reference Category | Reports |
| DOI | 10.5281/zenodo.20133174 |
Licence  |
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| Title (Primary) | Criteria and methods to identify Key Pollinator Areas (KPAs) and Buzz Lines. ETC BE working paper |
| Author | Deiss, F.; Ssymank, A.; Burger, H.; Cohen, H.; Harpke, A.; Jung, M.; Pütz, S.; Schweiger, O.; Visconti, P.; Settele, J. |
| Year | 2026 |
| Department | BZF; NSF |
| Page To | 63 |
| Language | englisch |
| Topic | T5 Future Landscapes |
| Abstract | Europe’s wild pollinators play an essential role for multiple ecosystem functions and services, including pollination of around 80% of wild flowering plants in Europe and a contribution of €15 billion annually to the market value of crops, ensuring human food security. Despite their ecological and economic importance, pollinators are experiencing severe declines, with every third pollinator species now in decline. The agricultural and forestry intensification, the loss of (semi-) natural habitats, and their degradation and fragmentation are amongst the primary drivers of pollinator declines. For flower visiting insects, the loss of flower-rich habitats with a high diversity in plant species is particularly detrimental. Habitat quality, connectivity, and complementarity are important to maintain pollinator diversity. In addition, climate change increasingly affects pollinator communities and drives colonisation of new habitats. To address this pollinator crisis, the revised EU Pollinators Initiative set the commitment to identify, and map Key Pollinator Areas (KPAs) and “Buzz Lines” (i.e. a network of ecological corridors for pollinators). This report develops criteria and methods for the identification of these two complementary conservation tools. KPAs represent the most important areas for the European Union’s (EU) key pollinator taxa, namely bees (~2,000 species in Europe), hoverflies (~1,000 species), butterflies (~500 species) and moths (10,000 species). Their identification combines direct criteria based on species occurrence, such as the presence of threatened, rare, endemic, or keystone species and high species richness, with indirect criteria based on resources necessary for species survival, including habitat type, floral resources, nesting structures, and larval host plants. Based on these criteria we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of threshold-based and complementarity-based mapping approaches. Buzz Lines shall represent ecological corridors connecting KPAs and other areas of conservation importance. They shall provide habitat continuity at two spatial scales. On the one hand, they shall support long- distance connectivity for migration and range shifts driven by climate change. On the other hand, they shall represent corridors at the regional and local scale, enabling adult and larval habitat connectivity through habitat mosaics, stepping stones and linear structures such as hedgerows. We provide general criteria important for both KPAs and Buzz Lines, such as low pesticide exposure, high proportions of semi-natural habitats, continuous flowering phenology or minimal light pollution and highlight current data gaps that need to be addressed in up-coming projects. The report provides a starting point for the implementation of actions to establish KPAs and Buzz Lines (action 2.3/4.4) of the EU Pollinators Initiative and aims to help in the achievement of the targets set under Article 10 of the Nature Restoration Regulation to ensure the recovery of wild pollinators. We emphasise the great potential of such an approach for the EU-wide conservation of our pollinators, through active Member State engagement, stakeholder inclusion and cross-border cooperation. |
| Deiss, F., Ssymank, A., Burger, H., Cohen, H., Harpke, A., Jung, M., Pütz, S., Schweiger, O., Visconti, P., Settele, J. (2026): Criteria and methods to identify Key Pollinator Areas (KPAs) and Buzz Lines. ETC BE working paper European Topic Centre on Biodiversity and Ecosystems (ETC/BE), 63 pp. 10.5281/zenodo.20133174 |
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