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Last updated 14 January 2013 EU Resolution on Wilderness in Europe 2009 Responses to the resolution from Scotland and Wales Conference on Wilderness and Large Natural Habitat Areas 2009 Poselství from Prague - a summary of the conference
Review of Status and Conservation of Wild Land in Europe 2010 Rebuilding the Natural Heart of Europe 2010, EC Presidency Conference on Restoration of Large Wild Areas Guidelines for the management of wilderness and wild areas in Natura 2000, Guidance commissioned by the European Commission 2012 A Working Definition of European Wilderness and Wild Areas, produced by Wild Europe 2012 Protected areas in Europe - an overview, produced by the European Environment Agency October 2012 |
In a breakthrough moment for wild land in Europe, the spark of an idea from a meeting in September 2007 has within a few months cascaded into a remarkable coalition for European wildlands, a highly supportive resolution being adopted in the European Parliament at the beginning of February 2009, and with a major conference backed by the EU Commission and Presidency to take place shortly in May 2009. Thus in less than two years, the determination and goodwill of a few people has been translated on the European stage into the potential of a mechanism for developing a continental policy and strategy on wildlands. While the early stages of this went without my notice until recently, I am determined to ensure that full coverage is given here so that support for these events can be generated in Britain. I will also document any response there is from Britain, its governments and statutory agencies. EUROPARC is a federation of national parks, regional parks, nature parks and biosphere reserves in 39 European countries. At its annual meeting in September 2007 at Ceský Krumlov, Czech Republic, EUROPARC hosted a round table meeting on "Wilderness in the European Union", attended by some 300 protected area experts from 24 European countries. They examined the concept of wilderness in the European Union, and discussed how to place wilderness on the European agenda, find ways of promoting its importance and draw up guidance for the stewardship of wilderness. After the round table, EUROPARC, PAN Parks, Eurosite, Wild Europe and the World Commission on Protected Areas joined together in October 2007 in a Wild Europe Initiative to sign a Resolution on Wilderness Areas (1). The resolution was addressed to the European Commission and the EU member states. It emphasised the importance of protecting Europe’s remaining large areas of natural habitat with non-intervention management, and pointed to the benefits of this wilderness in retaining biodiversity, support for sustainable communities, and for addressing climate change.
A key sentence in that
original resolution questioned whether there was an incompatibility with
the European system of protected areas (the Natura 2000 system of SACs and
SPAs) and wildland (2,3): There are obvious parallels to our system of protected area designation in Britain as the level of management intervention to maintain the favourable conservation status of an SSSI is invariably inimical to the existence of wild land. However, this overt challenge to conservation orthodoxy was short lived as by June, 2008, a revised version of the resolution was presented for endorsement that had the sentence on the Natura 2000 system removed, and a new sentence included that called on the European Commission to develop appropriate recommendations that would provide guidance to the member states of the EU on the best approaches for ensuring the protection of these natural habitats (4). The resolution with its signatories was subsequently submitted to the European Commissioner for the Environment, Stavros Dimas, in August. Further advocacy work by EUROPARC was carried out in Brussels in partnership with the Wild Europe Initiative, drawing on the support of all the networks involved, in an effort to generate momentum in the European institutions on the issue of wilderness. While the original resolution had been altered, the concern about wild land and the Natura 2000 system has obviously not gone away as EUROPARC members Sumava National Park and Bavarian Forest National Park hosted an international colloquium on 25-28 January 2009 in Srni, Sumava National Park, Czech Republic, on the subject of "The appropriateness of non-intervention management for protected areas and Natura 2000 locations" (1) The Wild Europe Initiative is constituted as an initiative rather than an organization to ensure flexibility, and to avoid being seen to be linked to any one area or country (5). It aims to promote a coordinated strategy for protection and restoration of large natural habitat areas, often labelled as ‘wild’ or ‘nearly wild’ lands, through joint action among key players. It seeks to identify, value and promote the benefits of wild lands and large natural habitat areas, assessing how best to translate them into specific ventures bringing potential income and employment for local communities, farmers and landholders as well as society in general. The initiative is steered by a ‘core group’ including personnel, generally at director level, from: Council of Europe, Countdown 2010, Europarc Federation, European Commission, IUCN Europe, IUCN Global, IUCN Wilderness Task Force, Natuurmonumenten, PANParks Foundation, UNESCO, Wilderness Foundation, WWF Europe office and Carpathian Programme office. EU Resolution on Wilderness in Europe - 3 February 2009 The Wild Europe Initiative resolution and lobbying proved effective, as a draft report on Wilderness in Europe was drawn up by Gyula Hegyi, MEP, and the Environment Directorate in October 2008 for the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety of the European Parliament. This report contained a motion on a European Parliament resolution on Wilderness in Europe. It was brought before the Committee in early December 2008, and was adopted by a vote of 33 to 1. From this committee stage, it was scheduled go to the European Parliament on 3 February 2009. As a means to provide background information before this plenary vote on the resolution, a mini conference on Wilderness Areas in the EU was held on 28 January 2009 in the Parliament Building in Brussels (6). As well as speakers calling for support for the resolution, and introducing the Wild Europe Initiative, other speakers addressed the continuing discussion about the suitability of the Natura 2000 system for wilderness protection, one using the example of the PAN Parks wilderness system of untouched core zones, in which no extractive use such as forestry or hunting are allowed and where the only management interventions are those aimed at maintaining or restoring natural ecological processes. The vote on the Wilderness in Europe resolution on 3 February was carried by 538 votes to 19 with 12 abstentions. It is a non-legislative resolution that brings forward a range of recommendations for the European Commission to take up, including (7):
The resolution on wilderness was adopted on the basis that no new legislation would be required to achieve the aims of the resolution, and with the knowledge that there is to be a review of the Birds and Habitats Directives with a view, where necessary, to make amendments to the Natura 2000 system. Thus they want to accommodate wilderness within the existing Natura 2000 system without going for separate legislation.
I am sceptical about this
and wonder if they will have to
revisit this decision not to legislate if it proves impossible to have
their "defined wilderness" under the Natura 2000 system. Gyula Hegyi, the
Hungarian MEP who proposed the resolution, already senses this. He said in
support of the resolution:
An indication perhaps of
the difficulties that may lay ahead for Wilderness in Europe is that in
the days since the resolution has been adopted, the media coverage in the
English speaking press has been non-existent. Only PAN Parks has issued a
News release,
Vlado Vancura,
the Conservation
Manager for PAN Parks said (8): Sensing good support for themselves from the resolution, PAN Parks is the only pan-European organization that supports the designation of wilderness core areas in large scale nature parks. I sent an email commending the EU resolution to the government ministers responsible for wildlife in the home countries: Huw Irranca-Davies MP, Minister for the Natural and Marine Environment, Wildlife and Rural Affairs, DEFRA Michael Russell MSP, Minister for Environment, The Scottish Government (since replaced by Roseanna Cunningham) Jane Davidson, the Minster for Environment Sustainability and Housing, Welsh Assembly Government The Scottish Government replied, showing its support for wildland in Scotland and said that Scottish Natural Heritage will be attending the Prague conference (see later) and that it "looks forward to playing a constructive part in future discussions" (9) The Welsh Assembly Government has also replied. They say that they have been advised by the Countryside Council for Wales that there are few significant areas of Wales that can still be considered wild. However, the assembly government "is responding positively to the EU Resolution, and is taking an active role in delivering its aims in Wales in co-operation with other stakeholders and project originators" (10) It would seem that now, after a month has passed, that I am unlikely to get a reply on the behalf of Mr Irranca-Davies, the minister responsible for Natural England, and thus for wildlife in England. Conference on Wilderness and Large Natural Habitat Areas As the report on Wilderness in Europe was being drafted, the European Commission agreed with the Czech Presidency of the European Union to hold a conference on wild and nearly wild land areas. This took place in Prague 27, 28 May 2009. The Conference, which was by invitation only, brought together policy makers, academics, civil society and other interested groups and individual experts from some 40 countries (11). The Conference on Wilderness and Large Natural Habitat Areas sought to ssess and propose a range of future policy options designed to promote a coordinated strategy for the protection and restoration of these areas across Europe, and thus give life to the EU resolution on Wilderness in Europe. The main objectives of the Conference were:
Building on these objectives, the conference aimed to:
The build up to the conference was supported by the production of a range of background briefing documents. These were substantially incorporated in to the Proceedings of the Conference. It is very much worth reading Wilderness and large natural habitat areas: definition and background in Appendix 4 of the Proceedings, as it is a valuable contribution that covers a number of important issues such as recognising that there is a continuum of wildland, and that zonation in a protected areas approach where identification of core, buffer and transition areas – each with different types and levels of intervention - can effectively support this continuum. It also has a marker for green infrastructure when it references the concept of “urban and neo-urban wildness” where issues of personal perception and values play as much of a role as geography.
Importantly for me,
however, is that it makes a strong case for the need for definition,
something that is resisted in Britain (even by supposed advocacy groups)
and which has held us back in casting a new and wilder future for our
landscapes (11): Mark Fisher 6 February 2009, updated 6 March 2009 POSELSTVÍ (Message) FROM PRAGUE - An Agenda for Europe’s Wild AreasSummary of the Conference on Wilderness and Large Natural Habitat Areas, Prague, Czech Republic, 27-28 May 2009 Some 250 participants from 40 countries attended the conference. My informant at the meeting laid out the broad issues raised as he saw them:
Having seen the mapping, none of this is surprising although there are scaling issues that obscure some of the smaller wild areas across Europe that have both a measure of the biophysical reality of a wilderness, but also a management intent to maintain them so, such as the designated wilderness in Finland, and the PAN Park wilderness and other voluntary wilderness, as in Italy. On the second point, Western Europe and especially the UK, is a mass of agricultural landscape where open habitat species in pastoralist systems are at the apex of the conservationist's admiration. Forested landscapes appear to be an antithesis that needs breaking to the will of these arch grazers. Thus a project was announced at the conference entitled Wild Europe Field Programme: A Field Programme for creating European Wilderness (12). Backed by WWFNl, ARK, Eurosite and Free Nature, it seeks to link up SACs and SPAs to form areas of about 100,000ha, with a target of 10 of these in the EU by 2020.
Their program brochure, which has the usual
cute shots of cattle, exclaims that "wilderness is more than forest
alone". They claim that the "majority of the European flora and fauna
evolved in tandem with large herbivores and were able to find a place in
extensive agricultural landscapes" and that the "natural process of
grazing can be sustained with the reintroduction of wild cattle and
horses, European bison and other extinct species". Convenient, that, in
the predominantly agricultural landscapes enclosed by SPAs and SACs.
Rather than substantiate these contentions, the program justifies itself
by wanting to take a "new, inspiring view on nature". They claim these
grazed landscapes will change the strategy from traditional nature
conservation towards a more development based approach and which also: The evidence so far is that the even-handedness (and perhaps adequate legitimacy) of half-open (and thus half-forested) landscapes is never enough for these pastoralists, whose biophysically artificial and incomplete systems drive everything to a greater level of deforestation.
The conference summary (13) recognises the
need for a co-ordinated Pan-European approach towards protecting
Wilderness Areas. Here comes the puff for SACs and SPAs: At least this did not imply wholehearted agreement. The difficulty of squaring the Natura 2000 system with wildland is revealed by the tortuous to-ing and fro-ing of the first three policy development points:
On the last of the broad issues of the
conference - the entry level to
landscapes to be considered wild - this concern very likely emanates from the Scottish
contingent to the conference. Scotland more than most in the UK, bigs up
its wildland potential, and will have been dismayed at the complete
insignificance that their contribution makes to the overall picture in
Europe. They may have taken umbrage at this, but the lesson for them is
startlingly clear, and is exemplified in a recent briefing paper on
protected landscapes at a Natural England Board meeting. At issue is that
the apogee of our protected landscape approach in the UK, our National
Parks, may fall out of even its lowly place as an IUCN Category V
protected area (14): The lesson here is that there has to be a different emphasis in our landscapes, and it will not be given just by covering our National Parks or other areas with SACs and SPAs, nor will application of the European Landscape Convention to these areas make a difference since the emphasis in the convention is that "natural and cultural components are taken together, not separately" (see Landscape protection - too many layers, too confusing, no overall plan (15). Both of these just allow business as usual for these farmed landscapes. They need not only extensification as a starting point, but also a return of the biophysical reality of wildland, its component species and its ecological processes. 6 June 2009 Review of Status and Conservation of Wild Land in Europe Shortly after the Wildland Research Institute (WRi) was launched at the University of Leeds in October 2009, a tender for a research opportunity on wild land in Europe was advertised by the Scottish Government (16). The research was commissioned by the Environment Minister, who was interested in how other UK and European countries recognised, protected and managed their wild land resource. The tender details referenced the resolution passed in the European Parliament on 3 February 2009 and the range of associated actions including mapping and restoration (re-wilding) of wilderness areas, sharing best practice and promoting the value of wilderness, as well as the conference in Prague in late May 2009 (see above). It was not clear to the Scottish Government how it could respond to the resolution in relation to its wild land, and so it sought a study that described the status of wild land in Europe and Scotland, its protection and management; that analysed the conservation/protection framework; and which gave conclusions and recommendations relevant to the future care of wild land in the Scottish context. WRi successfully tendered for the research, with myself as lead author, producing an interim report as a presentation at the UNESCO-sponsored conference on Scotland's Wild Landscapes – New Ways Forward at SNH’s Battleby Centre, near Perth in May 2010 (17). The presentation gave evidence that wildland was recognised by many countries across Europe through the IUCN system of classification of protected areas. There was astonishment among some in the audience that the UK had no protected areas in the IUCN categories that protect wildland. The findings of the interim report formed the basis of one of the breakout discussion groups of the meeting (18). Zoning approaches were viewed as a mechanism which offered the potential for combining aspiration, timescale and differential regimes of management in ways which could allow for the future development of IUCN Category I or II sites. It was recognised that there was little identity or aspiration for a national protected area system in Scotland, but since an election was forthcoming, there was considerable scope for lobbying of political parties. However, it would difficult for individual NGOs to subsume their sectoral interests in achieving consensus. A draft of the report was circulated prior to the main findings for Scotland being presented at a meeting in the Centre of Mountain Studies at Perth College in early July 2010. The presentation looked at protection for wildland in Scotland; the potential for Ecological networks; the need for an exemplary study of the perceptions and reality of wild land in Scotland; and for a summit process for wildland within a national strategy for protected areas in Scotland (19). Feedback on the draft report was received from the Steering Group, and a revised final report was submitted to the Scottish Government in October 2010. It was finally posted up on the Scottish Government website in December 2010 (20,21). “Rebuilding the Natural Heart of Europe”, EC Presidency Conference on Restoration of Large Wild Areas, Brussels 16, 17 November 2010
The presumption for grazing being a natural
process is being pursued now with vigour by some western
Europeans as a means to create “new wildland”, and on the back of the
momentum initiated by the resolution on wilderness passed by the EU
Parliament. A high profile project conceived last year started out as
the Wild Europe Field Program, and with the intention of spreading the
Dutch experience of nature development through the use of grazing
herbivores (see above). Its website contains an explanation of the projects approach
under the heading "Wilderness is more than forest alone" (22): Must PREVAIL! The arrogance of that, and the arrogance to say that MUCH of Europe's wild nature is from open landscapes. Yet again, we have a presumption that agricultural “biodiversity” is the predominant natural diversity because wild herbivores will have kept landscapes predominantly open. This is the “Vera hypothesis”.
The project
has now morphed into Rewilding Europe and had its launch in Brussels a
couple of weeks ago. However, just prior to the launch, I attended a
two-day EC Presidency Conference in Brussels that was ostensibly about
wild area restoration across Europe (23). Given a preview of the conference
program, I had very real concerns that the sheer weight of emphasis on
grazing projects would legitimise what is in effect a cultural convention,
predominantly supported in the Netherlands, and which has little or no
support in the scientific literature. It just seems to me to be the
habitual accommodation of the cultural use of lands as somehow being more
naturally biodiverse, and it was given currency by this sentence appended
to the agenda item on the presentation about the Rewilding Europe project
(24): So, in “reconciling” maximum biodiversity with wilderness principles, isn’t that just compromising those principles? How do wilderness dependant predators like wolf, lynx and bear figure in this "new wildland” because there certainly isn’t any systems thinking evident in the hyperbole of the Rewilding Europe project? Doesn’t it thus undermine the efforts of those that aspire to maintain those wilderness principles? Why isn’t there a demand that these grazing addicts justify their unsupported assertions? As I expected the conference gave out mixed messages, which always happens when wilderness principles are compromised. I felt in great sympathy with the unease of colleagues from Scandinavian and eastern European countries. I had to agree with Esa Härkönen, the speaker from Metsähallitus, the Finnish nature agency, that there wasn’t much need to restore wilderness in Finland as they already had so much! The eastern Europeans wondered why it was that the first round of sites for the Rewilding Europe project were mainly in eastern Europe, where they too have existing wilderness still in need of protection? But there were also pressures on western European initiatives, such as the restoration of wilderness on ex-military training grounds to the south of Berlin (25). I had a fascinating conversation with Bill Murphy from Ireland. Bill is a manager with Coillte, the state-owned forest enterprise company that itself owns over 445,000 hectares of land, about 7% of the land cover of Ireland. Coillte has a role in outdoor recreation, and Billy sees an opportunity in linking Nephin, one of their (publicly owned) forest areas with the adjacent (publicly owned) Ballycroy National Park, and with an area of (publicly owned) Bord Na Móna land (Irelands peat Board) which is spent bogland in need of reclamation. This will fulfil a vision of a large area of wilder landscape that people can enjoy walking in, camping out on trail walks, and experiencing a thrill of being immersed in nature that is gone from the landscapes in Britain. Its hard to see it happen in Britain when there is no sense that our public ownership of land, such as the Forestry Commission Estate, National Nature Reserves and MOD estate, could be used to make it happen. 3 December 2010 Guidelines for the management of wilderness and wild areas in Natura 2000
One of
the recommendations from the Prague conference (13) and noted in the
Presidents report, was the need to understand the relationship between the
protection of wilderness areas and the Natura 2000 system, and produce
guidance addressing issues such as natural changes to sites, response to
climate change, the maintenance of specific succession states and
non-intervention (26). In this regard, the Presidents report gave an
indication of a key issue that would need resolving in that guidance (26): An Expert Group on Natura 2000 Management met for the first time in November, 2009, with an aim of assisting the Commission in developing guidelines on specific topics linked to the management of Natura 2000 sites (27). The Commission said that it was already planning for a contract on "wilderness and wild areas and Natura 2000". The Commission then informed the Expert Group at its Fourth meeting, January 2011, that a contract had been awarded after a closed tender. The Guidance would review the current situation as regards ‘wilderness’ in Natura 2000 (both in terms of concept and spatially through mapping and identification of key species and habitat types). It would also present a number of good practice case studies and develop guidelines for managing and conserving wilderness areas in Natura 2000 (28). Alterra, Eurosite and the PAN Parks Foundation were the partners in delivering the contract (29). Luik Kuiters of Alterra presented the first draft of the guidance document at the Sixth meeting of the Expert Group in November 2011 (30). During discussion of the guidance, several participants sought clarification on how the wilderness index was established – especially as regards the use of a <20% human influence criterion, since some of the sites identified as good practice examples were not perceived as wilderness areas. Kuiters explained that the index was intended as a tool to help identify areas that were ‘wilder’ than others, but should not be applied categorically without qualification. The definition of wilderness in the European context needed to remain flexible as the perception of ‘wilderness’ in the European context varied considerably across the EU. For some areas with no wilderness left, the debate currently focused on whether it was appropriate to 're-wild’ areas. Even areas that were generally seen as ‘wilderness’ were not in reality, such as in Finland and Sweden, the Sami People are part of a pastoral system involved in reindeer herding which has a major influence of the surrounding environment. These so called ‘wilderness’ areas were still under significant human influence. It was noted that the European Parliament Resolution had called for action to achieve more wilderness in Europe, but this had not been addressed in guidance. Kuiters called for additional comments from the Expert Group. As the Guidance referenced my report on European wildland to the Scottish Government (see above) I was asked by PAN Parks to comment on it. I found a lack of emphasis in the Guidance on national protected areas and their regime of protection through national legislation (31). The Guidance stated that Natura 2000 could provide a flexible framework in which re-wilding measures could be implemented in order to enable natural processes to dominate. It struck me that that flexibility arose because the protection regime approach to Natura 2000 was vague and unclear in the national legislation of member countries. Part of the problem for the lack of clarity was that few countries recognised the Natura 2000 network as a classification system as such, instead indicating that Natura 2000 sites, if they were not instituted through contracts with landowners, may be included in any other category of protected area amongst the national protected area types, such that their protection regime would be that of the national protected area type. The European Topic Centre on Nature Protection and Biodiversity analysed the degree of overlap between the designations in national protected area systems (as reported in the CDDA) with those reported for the Natura 2000 network of protected sites (32). The extent of overlap varied substantially between countries – from nearly 0% to 100%. This low extent of overlap may be an indicator of the proportion of Natura 2000 sites instituted through landowner contracts compared to being designated under national protected area types. It thus may indicate variability in being able to achieve and enforce protective measures to the same extent as in national protected areas. It could be argued therefore that the basis for the protection regime for wild land in the EU is not the Natura 2000 system, but instead the national protected area types that designate for Category I and II. The protection regimes for these protected area types are frequently given in great detail in national protected area legislation, and especially so for protected areas that have strict protection. Considering how much attention was given to herbivores and the threats to wild land from grazing in the Guidance, I was surprised then to see grazing discussed in relation to rewilding and in particular when the Guidance said reintroduction of herbivores was a functional way to ensure that the components of a natural system are in place so that nature can regenerate and restore. This assertion was unqualified as to whether the grazing would be by native herbivores lost from the location, or by domesticated livestock. Nor was there any indication of whether this grazing would be as close to a natural herbivore pressure. I pointed out that many strictly protected areas in national protected area legislation specifically prohibit grazing with livestock. I also argued that herbivore pressure will never be as close to the natural situation as possible without native carnivores also being present. While managers may vary the number of herbivores, they will be incapable of creating the spatial variation of herbivore pressure that is induced by the physical presence of carnivores. I pointed out that this is a key consideration that is missing from initiatives that take a nature development approach with free-ranging domestic livestock, or domestic livestock as analogues of native herbivores.
An update was given on
the finalisation of the Guidance document at the Seventh meeting of the
Expert group in March 2012, following the comments that had been received
(33). This draft was presented to the Member State nature authorities, and
its forthcoming release was given a colourful splash in the July 2012
issue of the Natura 2000 Newsletter (34). A link to the Guidance was
eventually posted on the Commission website (35). The guidance has a
working definition for wilderness (36): 5 January 2012 A Working Definition of European Wilderness and Wild Areas Over 2010, a Wilderness Working Group was set up by Wild Europe with a remit to develop policy and propose practical initiatives for protection and restoration (37). A Technical sub-group was formed to put together a definition for wilderness and wild areas (38). Workshops were held during 2010 and early 2011 with participation from several of the WEI partner organizations, and which generated a first draft paper. Discussion of this document led to a draft being put out in March 2012 for wider consultation. WRi, which is represented on the Wild Europe Executive Committee, responded to that consultation (39). It was good to see an emphasis on the importance of natural processes in the definition, as well as the concept of a continuum as a useful way of understanding the spectrum of land use across Europe, and how it results in land of differing wild character. Importantly, the continuum is the context for seeing areas being moved further along from wild areas to wilderness through restoration; of buffer zones promoted towards becoming parts of the core area, and transition zones becoming part of buffer zones. The document however was weak on defining biodiversity other than by an inference that it has a compositional attribute. There was an opportunity to bring this concept alive in Europe through the context of wilderness and wild land, by basing it on the three core attributes of composition, structure, and function. Thus the three-dimensional structure of vegetation is central to the functioning of many natural ecosystems, and is inherent in wilderness. We were concerned that there was some worrying scope for interpretation in the definition of Rewidling given in Appendix I, in relation to allowing “natural processes to occur (again), replacing human management and interference”. This is the phraseology of those who have imbued the grazing of free-ranging domestic livestock with a role as agents of nature through a supposed de-domestication. It is the basis of Nature Development in the Netherlands where it originated and, as the name suggests, it is not about protecting and conserving existing nature, but is a move to produce a “new nature” where there is supposedly a spontaneous outburst of regeneration of open or scattered broad-leaf woodland in the presence of livestock grazing. However, evidence from a long term study on woodland regeneration in the open in the presence of grazing is against this happening any time soon. On the basis of that analysis, we strongly agreed with the prohibition of livestock grazing in Core Areas that was clearly stated under Livestock grazing in the Criteria for wilderness, related to zones in Appendix II. We gave examples of restrictions on activities in the legislation for strictly protected areas across Europe that this wilderness definition is supportive of. We also strongly agreed on the stricture in the Criteria under Restoration/rewilding that wildlife reintroductions and re-stockings are made using indigenous species only.
The
consensus definition of Wilderness in a European context is given in the
revised draft as (40): Wilderness areas should be protected and overseen so as to preserve their natural condition” The following definition for Wild Areas was proposed: “Wild areas have a high level of predominance of natural process and natural habitat. They tend to be individually smaller and more fragmented than wilderness areas, although they often cover extensive tracts. The condition of their natural habitat, processes and relevant species is however often partially or substantially modified by human activities such as livestock herding, hunting, fishing, forestry, sport activities or general imprint of human artifacts.” The intention is to halt or at least mitigate human activity in these areas within a given timescale, with an on restoration/rewilding so as to improve wilderness value – and on linkage by ecological corridors to create a network. 7 Jan 2013 Protected areas in Europe - an overview, October 2012 The European Environment Agency (EEA) produced this report in October, 2012, making the claim that it was the first publication of its kind to give a comprehensive survey of protected areas in Europe. Well, it was a longer document than the report on Protected Areas that they brought out in 2010, as a complement in Europe to the International Year of Biodiversity. And while it covered the 32 countries that are members of the EEA — the 27 European Union Member States; plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey — as well as the seven cooperating countries — Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo, it did not cover the Russian Federation, nor the ex-members of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Armenia that were covered in my report with the Wildland Research Institute (WRi) (see above). That claim to primacy is thus one of many over-reaches in this report, along with quite a few errors, not least in spelling my name wrong in one place (I blame that American chess player - Bobby Fischer - for that inevitability).
As per usual
for an EEA document it has a remarkably childish enthusiasm for extolling
the value of the Natura 2000 network, rating it alongside the UN
Convention on Biological Diversity as “one of the most important
international legal agreements for protected areas in Europe”, but
then the EEA is an agency of the European Union and thus would say that.
Surely, calling the Birds and Habitats Directives international agreements
is an over-reach when they do not cover all of Europe, only the 27 member
states of the EU? There is also the claim that Natura 2000 has been
responsible for much research activity over the past twenty years, a graph
illustrating an increase in published papers making reference to Natura
2000, especially since 2000. Except, of course, that the EEA report
doesn’t list the proportion of the papers that trash Natura 2000, such as
the study of plant diversity hotspots on Crete and their poor inclusion in
the Natura 2000 network prescribed for Crete that results from the
opportunistic and compositionalist approach for habitats and
species of the Habitats Directive, rather than a more inclusive route that
would involve a detailed evaluation of regional biodiversity patterns.
Then there is the study on the contribution of the Natura 2000 network to
biodiversity conservation in Italy that concludes: 14 Jan 2013 (1) Wild Europe Initiative: Promoting Wilderness in Europe, EUROPARC Federation www.europarc.org/what-we-do/projects-and-programmes/wild-europe-initiative (2) EUROPARC Newsletter 13, November 2007 www.europarc.org/uploaded/documents/24.pdf (3) Resolution on Wilderness Areas, 1 October 2007, link in EUROPARC and PAN Parks call for urgent action to protect Europe’s wilderness areas, PAN Park News 15 October 2007 www.panparks.org/index.php?name=OE-DocManager&file=download&id=2128&keret=N&showheader=N (4) Resolution on Wilderness Areas, link in Make a difference - Sign the resolution for wilderness in Europe!, Countdown 2010 www.countdown2010.net/index.php?s=file_download&id=178 (5) Conference on Wilderness and Large Natural Habitat Areas in Europe 27 - 28 May 2009, Prague, Clearing-House Mechanism of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Czech Republic http://chm.nature.cz/stories/conference-wildnearly-wild-areas-eu-27-28-may/ (6) Important Corner Stone in EU - Wilderness Conservation, PAN Parks News 28 January 2009 www.panparks.org/Newsroom/News?page=details&oldal=1&news_id=263 (7) European Parliament resolution of 3 February 2009 on Wilderness in Europe (2008/2210(INI)) European Parliament http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&reference=P6-TA-2009-0034&language=EN (8) Historical event for Europe's Wilderness Conservation, PAN Parks News 4 February 2009 www.panparks.org/Newsroom/News?page=details&oldal=1&news_id=264 (9) Scottish Government response to EU Resolution, 24 February 2009 www.self-willed-land.org.uk/europe/scot_reply.pdf (10) Welsh Assembly Government response to EU Resolution, 3 March 2009 www.self-willed-land.org.uk/europe/wales_reply.pdf (11) Proceedings of the Conference on Wilderness and Large Natural Habitat Areas, Czech Presidency of the EU Council and the European Commission, 27-28 May 2009, Prague http://www.wildeurope.org/images/stories/article_pdf/proceedings_document_final.pdf (12) Wild Europe Field Programme: A Field Programme for creating European Wilderness, WWFNl, ARK, Eurosite and Free Nature http://assets.wnf.nl/downloads/wildeuropebochure_def.pdf (13) POSELSTVÍ FROM PRAGUE - An Agenda for Europe’s Wild Areas http://www.wildeurope.org/images/stories/article_pdf/agenda_for_wilderness.pdf (14) Natural England’s Draft Policy on Protected Landscapes, NEB PU16 06 20 May 2009 www.naturalengland.org.uk/Images/NEBPU1606%20_tcm6-11160.pdf (15) Landscape protection - too many layers, too confusing, no overall plan, Self-willed Land, July 2006 www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/land_protect.htm (16) REVIEW OF STATUS AND CONSERVATION OF WILD LAND IN EUROPE. 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Project commissioned by the Scottish Government http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/1051/0109251.pdf (22) Wilderness is more than forest alone, Rewilding Europe http://rewildingeurope.com/2010/09/15/wilderness-is-more-than-forest-alone/ (no longer there) (23) EC Presidency Conference on wild area restoration, Wild Europe Initiative www.wildeurope.org/index.php/restoration/restoration-conference.html (24) “Rebuilding the Natural Heart of Europe” EC Presidency Conference on Restoration of Large Wild Areas www.wildeurope.org/images/stories/article_pdf/Restoration%20Conference_Agenda_Oct26.pdf (25) New wilderness in Germany, in Barn owls confound the conservation industry, Self-willed Land December 2010 www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/barn_owl.htm (26) Conference on Wilderness and Large Natural Habitat Areas (Prague, 27 – 28 May 2009) - Information from the Presidency http://register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/09/st11/st11168.en09.pdf (27) First meeting of the Expert Group on the management of Natura 2000. 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