Protected areas of the Azores

The network realizes the categorization of management for protected areas adopted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), adapting it to the specific geographical, environmental, cultural and political-administrative territory of the archipelago.

These regulatory frameworks were in keeping with those establishing the National Park of Peneda-Gêres and other national reserves, resulting from the application of Decree 9/70 (19 June 1970)[3] These laws, approved under the juridic regime of the Estado Novo government, occurred at a time when the Azores did not have its own political autonomy statute, and were the only interventions made by the central government in the protection of areas in the Azores.

The first grande measure to protect habitats occurred with the publication of Regional Legislative Decree 15/87/A (24 July 1987),[6] that established the legal framework for the creation and functioning of forest reserves.

Unfortunately, there were problems with the scheme, since the codification was not literally adaptable to the insular nature of the archipelago and the autonomous institutions that existed, nor the forest regime and reserves created ad hoc in intervening years.

Consequently, the creation of the Natura 2000 network did not accompany advancements on the continent, nor were Azorean areas integrated into existing classified sites of community interest.

His had no immediate change in the legal statute of areas included, although indirectly, by Regional Legislative Decree 20/2006/A (6 June 2006), it did approve the sector plan for the Natura 2000 scheme in the Azores.

That legal framework permitted the subsequent creation of the nine nature parks in the Azores and the reclassification, in accordance with the established IUCN classifications, of protected areas.

The archipelago is a region of volcanic landscapes with a strong terrestrial and marine biodiversity, marked by its place relative to continental Portugal, exhibiting a group of peculiar characteristics of great interest to conservationists.

Marine biodiversity is encapsulated within an area that includes the islands' tidal zones until the abyssal plain, registering 460 species of fish, across 142 families.

This list was later recognized by the European Union, and integrated into the Sítios de Importância Comunitária (SIC) (Sites of Communitarian Importance) and published with Commission decision 2002/11/CE 28 December 2001, and adopted as part of the bio-geographic definition of Macaronesia[17] and Azorean territory, under Directive 92/43/CEE.

This requisite was accomplished under Regional Regulatory Decree 5/2009/A, 3 June, which classified sites of communitarian importance (SIC) as special conservation zones (ZEC), in the territory of the Azores.