Internationally Important Plant Areas – IPA

Within the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation https://www.cbd.int/gspc/, the so-called "IPA Program" has been adopted, which is a means of identifying and protecting Europe's most important wildlife sites and habitats. Certain internationally Important Plant Areas (IPAs) are also one of the criteria for establishing ecologically important areas and ecological corridors of Serbia's ecological network.

IPA areas are natural or semi-natural ecosystems of exceptional botanical richness or with a large number of rare, endangered and endemic species or vegetation of high botanical importance. In Serbia, 61 IPAs have been designated with a total area of 743 525.72 ha, or about 8% of the territory of Serbia. About 40% of the total IPA area in Serbia is covered by forest, mainly broadleaf, while semi-natural grassland habitats cover almost 30% of the IPA area. At the same time, these natural and semi-natural habitats are characterized by a large number of national and Balkan endemic species (Stevanović, V. & Šinžar-Sekulić, J. (2009): Serbia. In: E.A. Radford and B. Odé (Eds): Conserving Important Plant Areas: investing in the Green Gold of South East Europe. Plantlife International, Salisbury, pp 63-68.).

The total IPA area in Serbia within the protected areas is 64.08%, whereas 267 106.12 ha are outside the protected areas (35.92%). Excluding the territory of AP Vojvodina, the total IPA area is 597 440.44 ha, of which 356 546.72 ha (59.68%) is protected and 240 893.72 ha (40.32%) is outside the protected areas. The territory of AP Vojvodina includes 146 085.28 ha of IPA areas, whereby 119 872.88 ha (82.06%) are within protected areas, while outside the protected area are IPAs covering 26 212.40 ha (17.94%).