Authors: Visconti, Piero; Jung, Martin;Pereira, Henrique;Fernandez, Nestor;

The EU 2030 Biodiversity Strategy aims to put biodiversity on the path to recovery by 2030, as a contribution to the European Green Deal goal of preserving and restoring Europe's natural capital. A key component of the EU Biodiversity Strategy is the development of a truly coherent Trans-European Nature Network (TEN-N). While the Commission has produced criteria and guidance for protected areas designations for its 2030 protected area goals, there is no operational framework to ensure these designations are spatially connected and complementary to each other both at pan-European, national and sub-national level. To address these challenges, the NaturaConnect project aims to co-create with key decision-makers and other key stakeholders, knowledge, tools and capacity building to support Member States in realizing an ecologically representative, resilient and well-connected network of conserved areas that contribute to achieving the objectives of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2030. In this presentation we will introduce the project, its approaches for assessing the sufficiency of the network and how to address gaps in TEN-N, and the 6 project case studies, where we expect direct implementation of the project findings. Finally, we will present how the wider conservation community can engage with, and benefit from the project