Globally, intensive forestry has led to habitat degradation and fragmentation of the forest landscape. Taking Sweden as an example, this development is contradictory to international commitments, EU obligations, and to the fulfillment of the Parliament’s environmental quality objective “Living Forests”, which according to Naturvårdsverket (The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency) will not be achieved in 2020 as stipulated. One important reason for the implementation deficit is the fragmented forestry management. In a forest landscape, felling and other measures are conducted at different times on separate forest stands (often relatively small units) by different operators. Consequently, the authorities take case by case decisions on felling restrictions for conservation purposes. In contrast, conservation biology research indicates a need for a broad geographical and strategical approach in order to, in good time, select the most appropriate habitats for conservation and to provide for a functioning connectivity between different habitats. In line with the EU Commission, we argue that landscape forestry planning could be a useful instrument to achieve ecological functionality in a large area. Landscape planning may also contribute to the fulfilment of Sweden’s climate and energy policy, by indicating forest areas with insignificant conservation values, where intensive forestry may be performed for biomass production etc. Forest owners should be involved in the planning and would, under certain circumstances, be entitled to compensation. As state resources for providing compensation are scarce, an alternative could be to introduce a tax-fund system within the forestry sector. Such a system may open for voluntary agreements between forest owners for the protection of habitats within a large area.

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Fishing operations likely to have a significant effect on a marine Natura 2000 area shall be subject to prior assessment and authorisation according to Article 6.3 of the Habitats Directive. This provision, partly also article 6.2, and in particular the cjeu case law, implies that this prior control should be applied rather often in practice, even for recurrent fishery irrespective of when the first fishing operation occurred in an area. Article 11 of the Common Fisheries Policy Regulation entails that Sweden and other Member States apply Article 6 of the Habitats Directive within the entire exclusive economic zone, to both own and foreign fishing vessels. A Member State is also, under certain preconditions, empowered to impose restrictions on fishery not supported by article 6 of the Habitats Directive, especially within the 12 nautical miles zone. A Member State is not formally hindered from excluding fishery from prior assessment and authorisation if instead general requirements on fishery in legislation can ensure that no future fishing operation is likely to have a significant effect on the Natura 2000 area. However, cjeu case law indicates that it would be difficult to fulfil that precondition.

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