What does the label ‘protected area’ actually tell you about what is being protected? How did the wolf lose its strict protection status in the EU? And what about a legal system that looks strong on paper but leaves animals exposed on the ground? Those questions sit at the heart of ‘Protecting Wildlife in Europe: A Comprehensive Analysis of Legislative Frameworks and Their Shortcomings’, a paper published in July this year in the Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy. Today I’m joined by both of its authors. Caroline Cox is an Associate Professor in Wildlife Crime and Policy at the University of Portsmouth. Dr Meganne Natali is a lawyer and legal consultant specialising in wildlife crime, zoonoses prevention and biodiversity conservation. She is also a Visiting Fellow at the University of Portsmouth School of Law. Europe has strong institutions, extensive legislation and considerable scientific knowledge. What it doesn’t have, they argue, is a body of law that treats wild animals as individuals capable of suffering rather than as stock, functions and entries in an annex.
Caroline and Meganne first met at a conference in Florence and have worked together ever since. Caroline spent years on elephant poaching and the illegal ivory trade before turning her attention to wildlife closer to home. Our conversation starts with fragmentation. EU wildlife law is not one system but several layers sitting on top of each other. The Birds Directive, the Habitats Directive, CITES and national legislation each bring their own lists of species, different listings trigger different levels of protection, and implementation is left to member states. From there we move to national parks. In England and Wales the framework dates to 1949, with two aims that regularly collide, conserving the landscape and giving everyone access to it. Caroline lives in the New Forest and describes what happens there when too many visitors arrive at once. We also get into the badger cull and its link to bovine TB.
The wolf takes up a good part of the episode, as it tends to on this podcast. Meganne explains how a species whose numbers grew from around 11,000 animals in 2012 to more than 20,000 in 2023 was moved from Annex IV to Annex V, and what that does and does not change for member states and for wolves. That opens a bigger question about whether protection status should be settled by ecologists or by politicians. There is also a problem with defending wildlife on economic grounds. The same argument runs the other way the moment an animal becomes costly. We also talk about social inequality, compensation for farmers and who ends up carrying the cost of conservation.
The guest featured in this episode paid a nominal guesting fee. This fee did not influence the content of the episode. The guest had no editorial control, did not review the episode before publication, and did not directly influence the questions asked during the interview.
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