Article Occurrence of the Green Shield-Moss Buxbaumia viridis (Moug.) Brid. in the Bieszczady Mountains of Poland Piotr Brewczy ´nski 1, Kamil Grałek 2 and Piotr Bila ´nski 3,* 1 Głogów Forest District, ul. Fabryczna 57, 36-060 Głogów Małopolski, Poland;
[email protected] 2 The Regional Directorate of the State Forests in Krosno, ul. Bieszczadzka 2, 38-400 Krosno, Poland;
[email protected] 3 Department of Forest Ecosystems Protection, University of Agriculture in Krakow, Al. 29 Listopada 46, 31-425 Krakow, Poland * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +48-1266-253-69 Abstract: The small-sized gametophytes and sporophytes of the green shield-moss Buxbaumia viridis (Moug.) Brid. make it difficult to study. However, in Europe, there has been increasing interest in this species in the past few years, mostly as a result of the implementation of the Natura 2000 network. In Poland, B. viridis has only been reported in isolated studies that have been limited in terms of area and the number of participating workers. One of the Polish regions where B. viridis was recently recorded is the Bieszczady Mountains, but there have been no large-scale surveys of that region to date. The objective of the current work was to describe the B. viridis population in the Bieszczady Mountains in terms of its spatial distribution and abundance, investigate its selected microhabitat preferences, and evaluate the conservation status of this moss species within the Natura 2000 site Bieszczady PLC180001. The studied region encompassed 93,490.44 ha, including 69,056.23 ha of managed forests and 24,434.21 ha of forests belonging to the Bieszczady National Park.