AGRECO Consortium is responsible for efficient and effective implementation of the project.

Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, General Directorate of EU and Foreign Affairs, Department of EU Financial Assistance is the Operating Structure and will be acting as the Contracting Authority of the project.

Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, is the End Beneficiary of the project.

Biodiversity loss is a critical issue of the modern world starting from 19^th century, as countries were developing in a pace that was never seen, price was paid by losing most of the available “idle” areas, forests, wetlands and many other ecosystems. Increasing demand of exponential human population growth led to faster degradation of ecosystems and increase in pollution via by-products.

Loss of biodiversity is a great concern for more than 30 years for all nations. There are several institutions which focused on biodiversity earlier, however conservation of biodiversity became a global concern a couple of decades ago only. To coordinate and prioritise conservation action for the most threatened species, especially those for which a specific country or territory has a global responsibility, Species Action Plans are prepared.

Turkey has the legal tools to act towards the conservation of biodiversity and sustainable management of natural resources from the constitution itself and also from the obligations under a number of laws and by-laws. The Endangered Species project will bring together local knowledge, assess gaps and propose objective harmonized methodology in line with best examples from EU countries to ensure long term survival of threatened species in Turkey.

The overall objective is to “promote conservation of endangered species, through enhancing institutional capacity of the responsible organizations and the cooperation between them”. This will be a long-term challenge to Turkey. This operation will lay the foundation of effective species conservation. The overarching objective is the increase of viable healthy populations of threatened species in Turkey.

Result 1: Strengthen the capacity of responsible Ministries to conserve Turkey’s wild species by implementing conservation actions in species action plan. This Result is directly aiming to the capacity development needs at the governmental institutions level that directly refers to the purpose of the operation.

Result 2: Capacity building in stakeholders and raising awareness in public and increase understanding of natural resources, ecosystem services and associated threats and risks to species conservation. And the second Result is aiming at a larger spectrum of key-stakeholders: NGOs, universities and citizen to better understand the importance of species conservation in close link with the ecosystem services and our daily lives.