Diversity of Ecosystems Recent Trends Pressures

Recent trends

Due to the former USSR border zone status, about half of the Latvian coastline has remained in a very good natural state. However, during the last 10 years, human activities have increased substantially. Occasionally high recreation intensities occur even in protected areas, causing disturbance to breeding birds and trampling of vulnerable dune plant communities. Although statistics show the decrease of fish caught during the period from 1990 to 1994, according to the opinion of some experts, could be due to the increase of unregistered catches, especially for coastal fishing.