1.1.2. Special Areas of Conservation (SACs)
Article 3 of the Habitats Directive requires the establishment
of a European network of sites that will make a significant
contribution to conserving the 189 habitat types and 788 species
identified in Annexes I and II of the Directive (as amended). The
listed habitat types and species are those meeting the Directive's
criteria and thus considered to be most in need of conservation at
a European level. A number of the listed habitat types and species
are given priority status in the Directive (Article 1d; Article
1h).
The Directive requires each Member State to
prepare and propose to the
European
Commission (EC) a national list of sites for each of the
features which occurs in their European territory
1,
for evaluation in order to
form a European network of sites of community importance
(SCIs). Once adopted as SCIs, the Member States must
designate the sites as special areas of conservation (SACs) within
six years (Article 4.4). These SACs, together with
Special Protection Areas (SPAs) classified under the
Birds Directive
(79/409/EEC), collectively form the Natura 2000 network (Article
3.1). The selection rationale for SPAs is described in a companion
publication to the present report (
Stroud et al. 2001).
1 In the case of the UK,
'European territory' comprises both the UK 'mainland' (England,
Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and associated sea areas) and the
UK Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. The Habitats Directive also
applies to the continental shelf and to the superadjacent [sic]
waters up to a limit of 200 nautical miles from the baseline from
which the territorial sea is measured (see Section 1.6.4). The
present report describes the SAC selection process in the mainland
UK only, excluding Gibraltar. A summary of the UK's implementation
of the Habitats Directive in Gibraltar is included in
Defra (2001). Note that the Directive does
not apply to Crown Dependencies - the Channel Isles and the Isle of
Man, which are not part of the EU.