Guidelines for the Monitoring of the Saproxylic Beetles protected in Europe

One action envisaged by "The EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020" is integrating biodiversity measures by maintaining optimal levels of deadwood in forests. Currently, the discussion and scientific research on optimal levels of deadwood for conservation are still ongoing.

The concept of conservation of deadwood is today widely accepted. For example, the European Union considers deadwood a "proxy" of forest biodiversity, as is evident from technical documents. For example, research has shown that about 30% of the species present in temperate forests are dependent on deadwood; particularly important are large, old trees, because they are rich in micro-habitats and often contain cavities. It is planned to strengthen the conservation of deadwood in the reserves managed by the Comando Unità per la Tutela Forestale, Ambientale e Agroalimentare (Command Unit for the Protection of Forests, Environment and Food) of the Carabinieri. A renowned example for a forest already rich in dead wood is the reserve "Sasso Fratino", an ancient beech forests, recently recognized by the UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Another example is the reserve Bosco Fontana, well-known to the international scientific community and to Europe's forest managers for pioneering deadwood restoration techniques.

The National Centre for Forest Biodiversity Carabinieri "Bosco Fontana" has been working on the conservation of dead wood habitats, also by carrying out concrete actions, for the last 15 years. Two Life projects are indicative for the approaches followed. "Bosco Fontana - urgent conservation actions in relict habitat" (LIFE99 NAT/IT/006245) lasted from 1999 to 2003. More recently, the project "Monitoring of Insects with Public Participation" (MIPP, 2012-2017) developed methods for the monitoring of five saproxylic beetles, also employing "Citizen Science", which meant actively engaging citizens for recording protected insects in Italy.

The results of the MIPP project, were presented during a "European Workshop", held in Mantua in May 2017 and in the "guidelines" presented in a special issue for forest managers. This work is well integrated with the manuals published by the Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), and serve to evaluate the conservation status of species listed in the Habitats Directive (Art. 11 and 17 HD 92/43/CEE). In the guidelines, new technologies, offered by the internet, have been employed to make this publication well known: e-books, hypertext and indexing in the major international platforms. This effort was made to reach the maximum number of managers of sites of the European Network "Natura 2000".

I hope that this manual will provide a useful tool for the work of reserve managers; it is the result of five years of work by the National Centre for Forest Biodiversity Carabinieri "Bosco Fontana" in collaboration with Sapienza – University of Rome, University Roma Tre, Italian Ministry for the Environment, Region Lombardy and the Council for Agricultural Research and Economics – Research Centre for Plant Protection and Certification.