The project entails the publication of Turkey's Key Biodiversity Areas Book (KBA), which identifies 305 key biodiversity areas in Turkey, most of which are not protected under any legal status.

This is the first national KBA book in the world. The book aims to create both a general public awareness on this issue, but more importantly it aims to inform and urge the government to take action for those areas that are not protected to be covered within the Protected Area Network, and to improve to conservation status for the protected but still threatened areas.

The KBA approach has been developed by an expert team representing the leading conservation institutions globally, among which Doğa Derneği has been active. KBAs are areas of international importance and are selected by using standard, globally applicable and threshold based criteria taking into account the distribution and population of species for which site conservation is appropriate. These criteria are built on two main principles of selection of sites conservation: vulnerability and irreplaceability. KBAs selected under the vulnerability principle host significant populations of threatened species whereas the irreplaceability principle is used for determining sites important for restricted range, congregatory and biome restricted species.

Turkey?s KBAs have been identified with the leadership of Nature Society and the contribution of several institutions and scientists. This work is the first application of the KBA methodology on a national scale. In this book, experiences gained through ?Important Bird Areas? approach by BirdLife International and its global partners have been expanded to include seven new taxonomic groups: plants, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, freshwater fish, butterflies and dragonflies.

This book identifies 305 KBAs which cover 20,280,149 hectares, equivalent to Turkey?s 26% surface area. These sites are selected for plants, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, freshwater fish, butterflies and dragonflies. Among all sites, 292 fulfill the KBA criteria for one or more taxonomic group on a global scale. Thirteen sites are important on a regional scale.

Among plants, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, freshwater fish, butterflies and dragonflies, Turkey hosts 2246 species that trigger the KBA criteria on a global scale while 750 taxa trigger the KBA criteria on a regional scale. The majority of the trigger species consist of plants.

Analysed in more detail, 2036 plant, 69 freshwater fish, 36 bird, 32 reptile, 28 mammal, 25 butterfly, 11 amphibian and 7 dragonfly species trigger the KBA criteria on the global scale. The following numbers of KBAs of global importance have been identified for each taxonomic group: 223 sites for plants, 29 sites for amphibians, 61 sites for freshwater fish, 66 sites for butterflies, 29 sites for dragonflies, 106 sites for birds, 95 sites for mammals and 108 sites for reptiles.

During this study, several trigger species populations have been identified for which, currently, no KBAs are designated due to insufficiency of information to deliniate site boundaries. However, location information on these trigger species populations are provided in Annex 6.

Furthermore, 451 species have been identified that occur solely at a single site in Turkey and that they are threatened from extinction. The majority of these species consist of plants. A total of 394 species of these species (87%) occur within 125 KBAs, while site boundaries were not drawn and KBAs were not selected for 57 of these (13%) due do to data insufficiency.