Conservationists Oppose European Wildlife Law Review

The two biggest pieces of European legislation protecting wildlife are under threat from potential weakening as a result of a decision to rewrite enironmental laws. A consortium of a hundred British conservationist groups are now battling to stave off an overhaul of core wildlife laws, stating that the ensuing threat to wildlife could be the greatest in a generation.

The EU recently launched a 12-week public consultation with the goal of streamlining the birds and habitats directives, ostensibly for the purpose of making these directives more cost-effective. Putting it bluntly, the protection of wildlife constitutes an 'administrative burden to business', and the EU may decide to deregulate legislation, allowing individual states to administer at the national level.

Concern over the erosion of the ‘Natura 2000’ protected sites, covering more than 1,000 animal and plant species, plus in excess of 200 threatened habitats currently under protection of the directives, has caused conservationists to wonder whether the EU really has the environment at heart, or whether this new initiative has a purely economic side to it.

The RSPB's Kate Jennings said, "The habitats and birds directives are the foundation of nature conservation across Europe and are scientifically proven to be effective where properly implemented. The directives deliver demonstrable benefits for nature, as well as significant social and economic benefits."

"This review is clearly part of a wider ideological deregulation agenda that is going on. In our experience, the majority of developers and the business community value regulatory certainty and the thing they least like to see are goalposts moving. The review introduces this."

And it's not just environmentalists who are concerned. Hunters, landowners, port owners, grid operators, and even development-related businesses have become involved, with Cemex, the cement-producers, signing a joint statement with conservationists.

Birdlife's Ariel Brunner said, "If the birds and habitats directives are weakened, the water framework directive will be next in line, and the national emissions ceiling directive will follow soon after."

Time will tell whether deregulation and directive streamlining will have a negative effect on wildlife and the environment; however, if the new rules are being drawn up with fiscal concerns, and not ecological ones, in mind, then the outcome is surely going to reflect this. It could be that, given the long drawn-out economic crisis, individual states, faced with setbacks to a resurgent development industry, may decide that they simply cannot afford to protect endangered species and habitats to any workable degree.

Image: Smooth newt (Lissotriton vulgaris) via Wikimedia Commons