ESENIAS-TOOLS Project Leaflet >>>

Project title: East and South European Network for Invasive Alien Species – A tool to support the management of alien species in Bulgaria (ESENIAS-TOOLS)

Funding:

Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area 2009-2014

Programme BG03 Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

Call: BG03.01: Invasive alien species networking for information exchange and capacity building

Project Promoter:

Project Partners:

	Partner 1. Executive Environment Agency with the Ministry of Environment and Water (Bulgaria) (ExEA)
	Partner 2. National Museum of Natural History, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Bulgaria) (NMNH-BAS)
	Partner 3. Institute of Oceanology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Bulgaria)(IO-BAS)
	Partner 4. Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (Greece) (HCMR)
	Partner 5. Croatian Agency for Environment and Nature (CAEN) - former State Institute for Nature Protection (Croatia)
	Partner 6. University of Novi Sad Faculty of Sciences (Serbia) (UNS PMF)
	Partner 7. “Ovidius” University of Constanta (Romania) (UOC)
	Partner 8. Duzce University (Turkey) (DU)
	Partner 9. Reykjavik University (Iceland) (RU)
	Partner 10. Hydrobiological Institute Ohrid (Republicof Macedonia) (HIO)

Project duration:

30 June 2015 - 30 April 2017

Project main goal:

Networking and development of invasive alien species tools within the frame of ESENIAS in order to support the management of alien species in Bulgaria.

Project objectives:

1. To develop the necessary technical infrastructure and tools within ESENIAS to support the management of IAS in Bulgaria;

2. To strengthen the regional cooperation within ESENIAS to ensure early detection and rapid response against IAS;

3. To raise the public awareness and gain wide support for combating IAS in Bulgaria;

4. To develop networking and cooperation with other IAS databases and gateways at national, regional and European level.

Working groups (WG)

WG1: Database development and organisation (Bulgaria, IBER-BAS)

WG2: Data collection, analysis, standardisation and harmonisation on alien marine species (Greece, HCMR)

WG3: Data collection, analysis, standardisation and harmonisation on alien freshwater species (Croatia, CAEN)

WG4: Data collection, analysis, standardisation and harmonisation on alien plant and fungi species (Serbia, UNS PMF)

WG5: Data collection, analysis, standardisation and harmonisation on alien terrestrial invertebrate species (Bulgaria, IBER-BAS)

WG6: Data collection, analysis, standardisation and harmonisation on alien terrestrial vertebrate species (Romania, UOC)

WG7: IAS research, management and legislation review (Bulgaria, IBER-BAS)

WG8: Capacity building  (Bulgaria, IBER-BAS)

WG9: Awareness raising (Bulgaria, NMNH-BAS)

WG10: Networking and dissemination of project results (Turkey, DU)

Case Studies

Case study 1: Biological and ecological traits of invasive alien freshwater mussels in Bulgaria (Bulgaria – Italy)

Case study 2: Comparative study on the effect of hydrological regime on the distribution of the invasive diatom Didymosphenia geminata in extreme environments (Icelandic rivers and lakes, and Bulgarian high-mountain lakes) (Iceland – Bulgaria)

Case study 3: Assessment of the impact of alien species on the biodiversity and endemism of ancient Balkan lakes (Lake Ohrid case study) (R. Macedonia – Bulgaria)

Case study 4: Estimating dispersal routes for IAS (Romania – Bulgaria).