i What is Fauna Europaea?

The Fauna Europaea project was funded by the European Commission for a period of four years (1 March 2000 - 1 March 2004, and till 1 October 2004 due to extension of FaEu for NAS countries). Fauna Europaea will assemble a database of the scientific names and distribution of all living multicellular European land and fresh-water animals.

Experts in taxonomy will provide data of all species currently known in Europe. Together these data will form a huge database which will be accessible to everyone. The University of Amsterdam coordinates the project, assisted by the University of Copenhagen and the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

Once the Fauna Europaea database is finished it will provide a unique reference for many groups such as scientists, governments, industries, conservation communities and educational programs.

s Why Fauna Europaea?

The European Commission has published the Community Biodiversity Strategy to provide the framework for development of Community policies and instruments in order to comply with the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Strategy recognises the current incomplete state of knowledge at all levels concerning biodiversity, which is a constraint on the successful implementation of the Convention.

Fauna Europaea contributes to the European Community Biodiversity Strategy by supporting one of the main themes of the Strategy: to identify and catalogue the components of European biodiversity into a database to serve as a basic tool for science and conservation policies. In Europe such a taxonomic index does not exist as yet. Partial overviews are scattered around Europe in different scientific institutes, while only some countries are working on national information systems. In regard to biodiversity in Europe, science and policies depend on knowledge of its components. The assessment of biodiversity, monitoring changes, sustainable exploitation of biodiversity, and much legislative work depends upon a validated overview of taxonomic biodiversity, in which Fauna Europaea plays a major role.

¸ Geographic scope of Fauna Europaea?

What does FaEu define as its external geographical boundaries? The FaEu contract states that the species and subspecies names should be registered at least at a country level, meaning political countries. The FaEu geographical system will follow basically the ISO - TDWG standards; the covered area will be the same as European mainland, plus the Macaronesian islands (exl. Cape Verder Is.), Cyprus, Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya, the Western Kazakhstan excluded.

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i FaEu-NAS extension

A positive evaluation has been given to the proposal: "Fauna Europaea extension to NAS countries" by the European Commission.

Participants from all, but Cyprus, NAS countries are included in the project. We have been able to find prominent institutes, which show promising capabilities. A preparatory meeting with new participants was held at 7-8 December 2001 in Warsaw, Poland.

The FaEu-NAS Start Up meeting has been held recently in Bratislava, Slovakia from 25th-27th July 2002. This meeting has been very successful in introducing new participants to EU matters and for the FaEu staff members to work interactively with all to assist with the preparations of workplans. Due to the high level of enthusiasm of all new participants about their involvement in the project and about their future contributions, a pleasant and spirited atmosphere of creativity was the result.

i General Info

During former Fauna Europaea meetings it was concluded that a stronger involvement of colleagues from East European countries would be very welcome.

On the 7th of August 2001, the European Commission published a Call, which addressed our specific need to finance the expansion of the FaEu project to Eastern Europe. This Call allowed for countries that are candidates for accession to the EU, to participate in current EU projects.

Newly Associated States (NAS) are: Bulgaria, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (also see the map below).

This Call asked coordinators of Community funded projects to identify legal entities from NAS, which could be included in their existing consortia. The additional participants from NAS should clearly add value to the existing project and this must be duly justified. The deadline of the Call was 15 February 2002.

¸ Scope of Extension

The scope of the extension has been discussed by the FaEu Steering Committee, and partner institutes (and experts in these institutes) will have to contribute to the following tasks:

1. Faunistic (distributional) data
2. Validation process (cross checking European checklists with national lists)
3. Information technology and datamining techniques
4. Submitting new taxonomic accounts (workshops)
5. Organisation of conferences/ workshops with NAS experts and group coordinators
6. Translation of interfaces into official EU languages
7. Establishing contacts with countries even further East (i.e. Russia)
8. Interlinking with existing databases
9. National legal issues in relation to exploitation (i.e. IPR) and dissemination (i.e. copyrights).