nature

The Directives have improved the effectiveness of UK and European conservation beyond
recognition, producing economic and social benefits in tandem with saving species and
habitats. Changing the Nature Directives would be a step in the wrong direction, but that
does not mean we should remain at a standstill.
The grave pressures on our natural environment are such
that we must do more. Completing the implementation
and improving enforcement of the Nature Directives
will help set the state of nature on a positive trajectory.
Moreover, it will help to iron out the costs and tensions
that can arise from imperfect implementation.
However, implementation of the Directives has
been slower than anticipated. The deadline for legal
transposition of the Habitats Directive was June 1994, but
no Member State met this deadline, or the 1998 goal for
proposing a set of sites for protection.
1. Plan for nature
The Birds and Habitats Directives should not be amended.
Instead, here in the UK, bringing the Directives to full
effectiveness should be a priority for the new Parliament.
The first five-year milestone for us in a 25-year plan for
nature’s recovery should be full implementation of the
Birds and Habitats Directives in the UK.
We propose several simple steps to achieve this.
2. Find out where we are: science and surveys
Both Directives require monitoring and reporting to
ascertain whether objectives are being met. However, the
UK has consistently failed to support adequate research.
For instance, the research requirements of Article 10 have
not been transposed into domestic legislation. This has
delayed research and acquisition of the data needed to
classify protected areas.
As a result, for many vulnerable species, insufficient data
has been collected. In some cases – for instance, the
medicinal leech and Desmoulin’s whorl snail – national
surveys have been undertaken but not repeated since
2000, while others like the Roman snail and lesser
whirlpool ramshorn snail, have never been surveyed.
There has been no systematic analysis of the status
of priority species since 2008, when an analysis of
progress in England suggested that 11% of species
were increasing, 32% were stable, but 22% were still in
decline (the remaining species had either been lost or their
trends were unknown). This showed that targeted work
for species is very effective. However, it also illustrated
that we need to undertake more species recovery work,
coupled with broader work on sites and habitats, because
species are being added to the priority list faster than they
are being removed.
On land, specialist woodland birds exemplify the UK’s
failure to comply with Article 10 of the Birds Directive,
as the absence of adequate research seriously hampers
conservation efforts. Overall, funding remains insufficient
to establish causes of decline and methods for recovery,
and this makes it difficult to ensure relevant provisions
are included within conservation efforts, such as agrienviroment
schemes under the Common
Agricultural Policy.
The limits on understanding are even greater in the marine
environment. For example, a monitoring programme
is needed to understand the status, trends and spatial
distribution of seabird populations. Seabird data collection
has been patchy, with most data gathered between
1979 and 2006. Since then, there has been no national
monitoring programme.
Most recent data has been collected in developer‐led
surveys linked to oil, gas and windfarm proposals. The
Government is effectively relying on developers’ data.
Such an ad hoc approach is not designed to identify areas
for site designation or keep track of changes. This lack of
information can create unnecessary conflict with industry
and presents a barrier to investment in marine renewables.
In this way, inadequate information has created barriers to
effective conservation.
The failure to require good post-construction monitoring of
impacts, and the effectiveness of mitigation for damage,
means that actual impacts of development also remain
unknown. This means that decisions remain locked in
a precautionary system, rather than improving with
experience. The precautionary approach will always have
a role to play, but data on impacts could be used to move
from a precautionary to a more evidence-based approach,
resulting in better decision-making in many cases.
The situation is improving. The latest reports on the
conservation status of the habitats and species listed
under the Habitats Directive show a reduction in the
proportion of assessments where conservation status is
unknown, from 31% to 17% for species and from 18% to
7% for habitats. xxviii However, proper survey work under
the Birds Directive is a priority.
The research requirements of Article 10 of the Birds
Directive should be transposed into UK law. To meet
these requirements, the Government should institute a
rolling programme of monitoring for protected species
on land and at sea, beginning in the first Session of the
2015 Parliament. By addressing gaps in our knowledge
of protected species and habitats, it will be possible to
improve conservation and save money.
3. Set out where we’re going: Favourable
Conservation Status
If we are to achieve the conservation benefits of Natura
2000, we need to have clear, site-specific conservation
objectives for protected species and habitats.
This is also important for business. Explicit objectives
are a prerequisite for proper assessment of development
proposals. Yet even on land, where data is often available,
site objectives are frequently wholly generic, failing even
to clarify whether a species or habitat is in Favourable
Conservation Status which must be maintained, or in
Unfavourable Conservation Status and in need
of restoration.
34