Making good use of the ZNIEFF inventory for regional planning

The Natural Areas of Ecological, Fauna and Flora Interests (ZNIEFF in French) aim at inventorying and at mapping the French natural heritage. The debate related to their significance in regional planning questions both their legitimacy and scientific foundations. In this paper we present the information data sets and methods used to create them and also their limits. We illustrate the progress of knowledge by comparing the inventory in both Languedoc-Roussillon and ProvenceAlpes-Cote d'Azur (PACA) regions. The ZNIEFF provide information to stakeholders on biodiversity conservation issues at stake and can be used for integrating the conditions of biodiversity persistence to land planning policies. They show how difficult it is to measure biodiversity and to think ourselves in nature, belonging to the same community of life.