The relevance of farming and farmland for maintaining the landscape and biodiversity of the Sava floodplains

This report presents the results of the activities the land use working group performed in the frame of the Life 3rd countries project: “Protection of Biodiversity of the Sava River Basin Floodplains” (LIFE06 TCY INT 246) as mentioned under task C of the project proposal. The following deliverables of Task C are included in this report: - Assessment of traditional and ongoing land use activities and their relevance for maintaining the landscape and biodiversity ( chapter 5, 6 and 7) - Analysis of market conditions and product chains. ( chapter 8) - Action plan for restoring, maintenance and management of floodplain areas including guidelines for land use practices ( chapter 10) - Concepts for innovative land-use practices ( chapter 9) - Recommendations for setting up a support/incentives scheme for continuing traditional land uses ( chapter 9) The analysis of the land uses is relevant because in combination with the information about the distribution of habitats and species it provides an essential bases for the identification of threats and the design of the required restoration and management measures to secure favourable conservation status of the habitats and species. Given the time needed to make a full inventory of the land uses of all 49 project sites along the Sava River it was decided to focus on those sites that were indicated as most valuable for biodiversity. The sites are selected in close communication with the biodiversity working group because and selected because of the need to improve the protection status and to design management and restoration plans for these sites.