SPA designation is not complete yet. Several sites have not been designated to the extent necessary and are lacking crucial areas of habitat.

For example, for the ‘Parndorfer – Platte Heideboden’ site, the majority of breeding places for large birds of prey (Imperial Eagle, Saker Falcon and Red-footed Falcon) are not included within the SPA.

SCI designation is also not completed, especially for some habitat types and species.

Designation of important sites for some bat species is especially poor.[1]

Requirements of both nature directives are now transposed in the relevant legislation of all the responsible federal regions (Länder) of Austria.

Management planning is also the responsibility of the regions and progress varies to a high degree.Some (e.g. Upper Austria and Tyrol) have good to high quality management plans and are working on their implementation through specially appointed local administrators (“Gebietsbetreuer”).

Others have management plans of lower quality, no local administrators and there are counties (e. g. Lower Austria, Burgenland) with very few usable management plans and without any steps to install an effective management of areas.

Therefore, while payments for farmers in Natura 2000 sites are more or less stable (but not secured in the medium term) the creation and maintenance of basic infrastructure for the conservation of Natura 2000 sites (staff, monitoring, etc.) has been stopped in some counties and is stagnating overall.

The situation varies across regions and is in some cases worse than described above.