Abstract
Croatia in the process of accession to European Union established the National Ecological Network and Appropriate Assessment procedure. The National Ecological Network covers the areas of Croatia that have been identified as areas of importance for conservation or establishment of a favorable status of threatened and rare habitat types and/or wild taxa at the European (Birds Directive and the Habitats Directive and Bern Convention) and national level. No wind farm can be built if it is not planned in spatial plan. Due to this reason, numerous locations were put into spatial plans to reserve potential location. Although these locations of wind farms are only potential, huge number of planned locations represent a big threat to biodiversity of Croatia, first of all to birds of prey and bats, which are groups of animals most endangered from wind farms (direct collision, barotrauma, alteration of flight path etc.). In the process of issuing building permits each wind farm has to pass Nature Impact Assesment (Appropriate Assessment) procedure for National Ecological Network, which is a part of Environmental Impact Assessment. For the purpose of helping authorities in the screening process, project COAST* engaged experts for birds and bats to prepare zonation maps of the COAST area.