Page 246 - 7. State Of Environment Report Of Türkiye

F. NATURE

CONSERVATION

AND

BIODIVERSITY

F.1. Türkiye’s Biological Diversity and Importance

Türkiye has agricultural, forest, mountain, steppe, wetland, coastal and marine ecosystems and
different forms and combinations of these ecosystems.

This ecosystem and habitat diversity has brought with it an important species diversity. When
the biological diversity of the countries in the temperate zone is compared in terms of biological
diversity, it is noticeable that animal (fauna) biodiversity is quite high in Türkiye. Despite the lack
of data, invertebrates constitute the largest number among the identified living species. The
number of invertebrate animal species is approximately 19,000, of which approximately 4,000
species/subspecies are endemic. The total number of vertebrate animal species identified to
date is close to 1,500. Among vertebrates, more than 100 species, 70 of which are fish species,
are endemic. The fact that Türkiye is located on the world’s two major bird migration routes
increases its importance as a feeding and breeding area for birds.

To understand the richness of Türkiye in terms of plant (flora) species, it will be sufficient to
compare it with the European continent. While there are 12,500 open and closed seeded plant
species in the whole European continent, it is known that there are close to this number (ap-
proximately 11,000) species only in Anatolia.

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