Adaptation to climate change<br> Legal challenges for protected areas

Legal implications of range expansions in a terrestrial carnivore: the case of the golden jackal (Canis aureus) in Europe

“…On an ecological level this leads to the creation of novel ecosystems (Hobbs et al 2013). Additionally, these changes create challenges for management and policy, especially for species associated with conflicts (Redpath et al 2013) and/or whose management is influenced by international legal instruments (Cliquet et al 2009;Trouwborst 2013Trouwborst , 2014d. The golden jackal (Canis aureus) in Europe is one such species.…”

Observed and predicted effects of climate change on species abundance in protected areas

“…Sites can also be designated for containing a total species assemblage of at least 20 000 birds. Although SPAs have benefitted wild bird populations in the past 17 , future changes to population sizes within the network could lead to populations within sites dropping below the 1% thresholds, even if species are not lost completely from a given site, potentially threatening the legal status of individual sites, an issue of current policy debate [18][19][20] .…”

“…Some previous studies of the likely impacts of climate change upon protected areas based on species' occurrence have suggested that that new policies are required to adapt protected areas to climate change 8,18 , whilst others suggest that existing networks may be adequate 10 . The SPA network is targeted at a wide range of species, and therefore implicitly protects a wide range of habitats, selecting for each species the sites with the largest populations.…”

Scotland's Marine Protected Area network: Reviewing progress towards achieving commitments for marine conservation

“…These objectives, if not supported by more detailed targets for monitoring are vague and difficult to measure. This is especially true under future scenarios of climate change, for example, whereby it may become increasingly difficult to achieve such an objective (Cliquet et al 2009) recovery options, raised in the stakeholder workshops, can be even harder to achieve (Mee et al 2008). With the predominant UK marine habitats being reported as "in poor status"…”

“…Whilst in some circumstances the designation of an NTZ neglects the uncontrolled use and persistent degradation of the marine environment outside the designated area (Agardy et al 2003), there is a lingering question over whether it is possible to deliver ecosystem services and maintain ecosystem functions (and resilience) without some completely untouched pristine reference areas. Scotland's approach throughout has been very species and habitat based rather than having a focus on ecosystem function highlighting the conflict between existing nature conservation policy and "the need for legal certainties for stakeholders" (Cliquet et al 2009). Scotland's approach calls into question whether a narrow focus on species and habitats rather than an ecosystem level and services approach or a clearer focus on site integrity, can ever achieve ecological coherency across the MPA network.…”