State of Nature Report for the Caribbean Netherlands, 2024 : A second 6-year assessment of the Conservation State, threats and management implications for habitats and species in the Caribbean Netherlands

Summary

The Caribbean Netherlands (Bonaire, Saba, St. Eustatius) is part of the Caribbean "biodiversity hotspot,"which has very high biodiversity and is under significant human pressure. It hosts about 130 endemic species and 143 internationally threatened species of policy relevance. The Netherlands Ministry ofAgriculture, Fisheries, Food Security and Nature has the final responsibility for the implementation and enforcement of international nature conservation treaties for these islands. This comes with policy and management obligations and raises various policy questions. To address these, a Nature Policy Plan is drawn up every five years. However, as of 2020, this was combined with aspects of an environmental plan and presented as an integral ten-year Nature and Environment Policy Plan (NEPP). For the evaluation of the results of nature policy and the drafting of new nature policy plans, reporting on the State of Nature (SoN) is essential. For this, we assessed the “Conservation State” (CS) of habitats and species according to the methods prescribed by European Union’s Habitats Directive (HD).