"One only loves what one knows, and one only protects what one loves." (Konrad Lorenz)
Since the UN Conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the global community has committed to significantly limiting or mitigating processes leading to biodiversity loss and halting overall species extinction. Many countries, including EU member states and Germany with its federal states, have been developing strategies and concrete concepts to achieve this goal.
The availability of the most current and real data on the status quo of species or areas is a prerequisite for meaningful action. This, in turn, can only be achieved through thorough initial assessment and subsequent regular monitoring of conditions, populations, and habitats. To ensure that the usually limited financial and personnel resources for monitoring are used efficiently and effectively, according to the needs and requirements (often based on legal obligations), it is essential to optimize and standardize the methods employed. This is particularly important considering that monitoring data should be available across Europe, allowing for the development of harmonized indicators on the state of biodiversity at the European level (Schmeller et al., 2009).
With the growing monitoring responsibilities and the resulting data needs, the resource investment (time, personnel, and/or financial resources) increases automatically and continuously. Consequently, the pressure on the responsible authorities to take action significantly rises. However, these authorities are often increasingly unable to conduct the complex and technologically demanding surveys themselves. As the costs for monitoring tasks rise, there is a great interest in developing cost-effective monitoring methods (Bock et al., 2005). In addition, there are many new monitoring tasks such as mapping of open landscape biotopes, FFH mowing meadow mapping, HNV monitoring, insect monitoring etc. and often not enough personnel or resources for it (Jedicke et al., 2024).
The use of drones can contribute in various ways to increase the effectiveness of monitoring, reduce costs, and minimize disturbances.
Especially for Environmental NGOs, authorities, small planning firms and freelance conservation experts, the use of new technologies offers promising opportunities to simplify work processes and complement service portfolios.
This manual has been specifically developed to support conservation efforts and to help make the growing monitoring tasks more effective and cost-efficient.
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