15.3.2. Monitoring IUCN and other conservation species (policies)

METU has a policy to identify, monitor and protect IUCN Red List and nationally protected species in areas affected by its operations.

Policy

METU's Nature and Ecosystems Policy, one of its published Sustainable Campus Policies, states: "METU campuses consist of very rich land, lake, and marine ecosystems that very few universities in the world have. It is one of the principles of our University to use these ecosystems as natural laboratories to protect and develop them in addition to coming up with exemplary strategies for their sustainable use." Among the principles the policy commits the university to put into practice is "creating a database on the unique biodiversity of campuses, developing practices for the protection of endangered species as listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the protection of the ecosystem against invasive species", together with "developing an integrated management strategy prepared specifically for METU to protect land and sea creatures and ecosystems" and "establishing observation and prediction systems to monitor the health of aquatic and marine ecosystems".

The commitment is also set in METU Strategic Plan 2023–2027, approved at the joint meeting of the University Senate and the University Administrative Board on 26 April 2022: Objective O4.2 calls for "protecting ... the rich forest, steppe, sea, and lake ecosystem integrity and biodiversity" of METU's campuses, and Strategy S2 for "researching the ecological and biodiversity values of our campuses and promoting them by considering the protection-use balance".

Monitoring in practice

Species on the METU campus are identified and recorded each year through the Tür Say! bioblitz run by EKOSAM, the EKOSAM Student Club and the Nature Conservation Centre Foundation – in 2025 on 25 May, open to anyone – and through EKOSAM's long-term monitoring of Lakes Eymir and Mogan, which includes annual surveys of fish, aquatic plants and macroinvertebrates.

https://ekosam.metu.edu.tr/tr

Building the species database the policy calls for: EKOSAM's METU Carrying Capacity Project is bringing together, for the first time, all bird and butterfly records for the METU campus and Lake Eymir in a database of species with location and date, and tracks changes over time. It assesses the 252 bird species recorded on campus and the many butterfly species – some of them endemic – for which the area is an important habitat meeting Natura 2000 criteria, and maps the sensitive habitats that a visitor management plan must protect.

Protected areas around the university: Lakes Eymir and Mogan lie within the Gölbaşı Special Environmental Protection Area, one of 16 in Türkiye, and Lake Mogan is designated an Important Bird Area. EKOSAM's pond work focuses on habitats that support more of a region's rare, endemic and threatened freshwater species than lakes or rivers. https://ekosam.metu.edu.tr/tr/odtu-bap-merkez-odtu-tasima-kapasitesi-projesi