The first meeting of the Steering Committee in the current year was held on 02.03.2016 in the Office of the Landscape Parks Complex of the Śląskie Voivodeship in Będzin at 11:00.

Apart from the members of the Steering Committee representing different offices and institutions, representatives of a company conducting environmental monitoring within the framework of the Life+ Beskidy Project – Research and Environmental Control Centre [Ośrodek Badań i Kontroli Środowiska – OBiKŚ] were present at the meeting. Employees of OBiKŚ presented the results of environmental monitoring carried out in 2015. The presented results related to both flora and fauna. The meeting in March was a continuation of the issues addressed at the previous meeting of the Steering Committee in December 2015.

Environmental monitoring is an essential measure for an ongoing assessment of the impact exerted by the activities on the condition of habitats and species. The discussion at the meeting of the Committee in March regarded, among others, the results of fauna monitoring, in which the following groups of insects were studied: Hemiptera, Orthoptera, Rhopalocera, snails from the Helicidae family and spiders from the Salticidae and Araneidae families. During his presentation Łukasz Depa, PhD – a representative of OBiKŚ company – drew attention to the factors which in 2015 contributed to the limited amount of data obtained in the field. In 2015 the whole area of ​​study was exposed to extreme weather conditions, the strongest in the mountain areas (data from IMGW [Institute of Meteorology and Water Management]). The average temperature in the area of study in the summer was higher by circa 3˚C than the mean multiannual temperature and the precipitation in this period amounted only to 50% of the mean multiannual precipitation. The summer already in 2014, when the monitoring of the state ‘0’ was carried out in the monitored area, was warmer by 0.5-10˚C while precipitation amounted to 100% of the norm of the multiannual mean, but with the majority of heavy rains. Unfortunately, the weather conditions in 2015 were extremely unfavourable (if not disastrous) for the mountain fauna, due to extremely high temperatures and drought. In such conditions, hygrophilous and oligothermophilous species look for hiding places or migrate to humid and shaded habitats, usually in accordance with the gradient of altitude. In the opinion of the monitoring team it was a decisive factor which formed the results of the monitoring in 2015 and caused that boreal-mountain species were not observed. This factor certainly has to be taken into consideration not only in 2016, during field studies, but also in the final report, all the more since the winter so far (December 2015 – warmer by 3-4˚C than the multiannual mean in the studied area, January slightly cooler than the mean) has indicated the possibility of disturbance in the phenology of many species.

The results of the flora monitoring were presented by a representative of OBiKŚ, Mariusz Simko. Mr Simko presented the following conclusions of the carried out studies: during the field studies on the *6230-2 habitat of West Carpathian Nardetalia an improvement in its condition was observed, mainly as a result of carried out active protection procedures. The total number of areas with the unsatisfactory U1 condition has increased, while areas with the poor U2 condition have decreased. The condition of the 6520 habitat of mountain Trisetum meadows and Agrostis meadows used extensively has not changed so much as in the case of habitat of Nardetalia.

Issues connected with the location of shepherd’s hut complexes built within the framework of the Project in Cięcin in Bukowina, in Kamesznica-Złatna in Bźniok and in Przegibek in Rycerka Górna were also discussed during the meeting of the Committee.

18 people in total participated in the meeting.

Mr Łukasz Depa, PhD - a representative of OBiKŚ company, pic. ZPKWŚ