Weak agreement between the species conservation status assessments of the European Habitats Directive and Red Lists

Moser, Dietmar; Ellmauer, Thomas; Evans, Douglas; Zulka, Klaus Peter; Adam, Mildren; Dullinger, Stefan; Essl, Franz

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2016.03.024

Cited by 19 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Indeed, the approaches currently employed by EU member states to operationalize FCS are widely disparate (McConville and Tucker 2015). In addition, a recent study reported a worryingly poor correlation for many species between their red list status and their conservation status as reported by EU member states under the Habitats Directive (Moser et al 2016). Because these controversies can have legal consequences for member states, they contribute to many of the conflicts surrounding biodiversity conservation in general (Hiedanpää and Bromley 2011;Redpath et al 2013;Epstein 2016).…”

Section: Context: Confusion Concerning Fcs Concept Impairs Effectivenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpreting ‘favourable conservation status’ for large carnivores in Europe: how many are needed and how many are wanted?

2016

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The EU Habitats Directive is a key biodiversity conservation instrument. It contains legal obligations for the 28 EU member states in order to safeguard a 'favourable conservation status' (FCS) for selected species and habitat types. The crucial FCS concept itself, however, remains subject to considerable confusion regarding its proper interpretation and operationalization, impairing the Directive's effective implementation. Diminishing this confusion is the purpose of this review. It focuses specifically on large carnivores-wolf (Canis lupus), brown bear (Ursus arctos), Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) and wolverine (Gulo gulo). These pose particular challenges, given their low densities, transboundary populations, and human-wildlife conflict potential. Large carnivores are also the only species for which specific guidance has been adopted by the European Commission-and subsequently contested. Our methodology combines legal analysis with an understanding of the species' ecology and associated social, economic and cultural dimensions. We analyze the methods and processes through which EU law is interpreted, implemented, and enforced, by member states, European Commission, and EU Court of Justice-which is the ultimate authority regarding EU law interpretation. On that basis, we engage three particularly complex interpretation questions which are also of great practical significance: (1) the appropriate scale to achieve FCS (national or transboundary population level); (2) the respective roles of demographic, genetic and ecological factors in determining FCS; and (3) the use of extinction versus carrying capacity as benchmark. 123Biodivers Conserv (2017) 26:37-61 DOI 10.1007/s10531-016-1238 Regarding these questions, we identify approaches that are workable and effective, as well as likely to be endorsed by the EU Court.

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Section: Context: Confusion Concerning Fcs Concept Impairs Effectivenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpreting ‘favourable conservation status’ for large carnivores in Europe: how many are needed and how many are wanted?

2016

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“…Article 17 and Red Lists aim to assess the status of a species using quantitative indicators such as size and trends in the area of occurrence, population size and trends (Moser et al 2016); nonetheless, they adopt similar but different criteria. There is not a one to one relationship between a IUCN and the CS categories.…”

Section: Relationship Between Conservation Status (Cs) and Iucn Risk mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The main difference between the two assessment of species' conservation status (IUCN and HD protocols), is that the former measures the distance of a species from the risk of extinction, while the latter measures the distance from a ''Favourable Conservation Status''. However, these two different, but generally comparable, schemes provide an opportunity for a comparison to explore potential uncertainties involved in such assessments (Moser et al 2016) and/or between scientists' Red Lists, and nature protection legislation enacted by governments (Mendoza-Fernández and Mota 2016); this issue deserve a relevant interests because setting conservation actions largely depends on the agreement among experts on the conservation status of species (Moser et al 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conserving plant diversity in Europe: outcomes, criticisms and perspectives of the Habitats Directive application in Italy

et al. 2016

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“…This is an arbitrarily-chosen scoring system (c.f. Moser et al 2016) designed to promote clarity where there is a difference in threat assessment rank; we do not intend to symbolize that CR (3) is somehow twice as imperiled as NT (6), or that the difference between NT and VU is the same as the difference between EW and EX-these numbers are indications of relative rank only and the difference of 1 unit between them is purely to provide interpretive clarity. Our 'Difference in Assessment' for a species between IUCN-RL and RRL is the numerical score for the IUCN-RL assessment minus the numerical score for the RRL assessment.…”

Section: Ranked-comparisons Between Assessmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…RRL can commonly use the same or similar criteria as the IUCN-RL to assess extinction risk, but exact processes can vary and may not be consistent between different regions. Given their prevalence and importance for conservation, a number of studies have sought to compare RRL with IUCN-RL assessments in order to integrate RRL data into the global IUCN-RL (Rodriguez 2008;Moser et al 2016), or to apply IUCN-RL assessments and criteria at regional levels (Gärdenfors et al 2001). Typically, comparisons between RRL and IUCN-RL assessments will find differences in total number of evaluated taxa (Rodriguez 2008;Brito et al 2010), in the geographic distribution of assessments (Brito et al 2010;Zamin et al 2010), in taxonomic sampling (Rodriguez 2008;Zamin et al 2010), and in the level of threat status assigned to the same species (Brito et al 2010;Morais et al 2012;Harris et al 2012;Helfman 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing and contrasting threat assessments of plant species at the global and sub-global level

et al. 2017

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Evidence-based assessments of extinction risk are established tools used to inform the conservation of plant species, and form the basis of key targets within the framework of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC). An overall picture of plants threat assessments is challenging due to the use of a variety of methodologies and range in scope from global to subnational. In this study, we quantify the state of progress in assessing the extinction risk of all land plants, determine the key geographic and taxonomic gaps with respect to our understanding of plant extinction risk, and evaluate the impact of different sources and methodologies on the utility of plant assessments. To this end, we have analyzed a cleaned dataset compiled from IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and Regional Red Lists. We reveal that there are assessments available for 89,810 distinct species or 25% of all accepted land plant species. However unlike with other major organismal lineages the bulk of the plant species assessments are derived from Regional Red Lists, and not the Global IUCN Red List. We demonstrate that this bias towards regional assessments results in distinct taxonomic and geographic strengths and weaknesses, and we identify substantial taxonomic and geographic gaps in the assessment coverage. With species that have been assessed in common at both global and regional levels, we explore the implications of combining threat assessments from different sources. We find that half of global and regional assessments do not agree on the exact category of extinction risk for a species. Regional assessments assign a higher risk of extinction; or underestimate extinction risk with almost equal frequency. We conclude with recommended interventions, but support the suggestion that all threat assessments should be pooled to provide more data and broaden the scope of threat assessments for monitoring progress towards GSPC targets.

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Weak agreement between the species conservation status assessments of the European Habitats Directive and Red Lists

Cited by 19 publications

References 23 publications

Interpreting ‘favourable conservation status’ for large carnivores in Europe: how many are needed and how many are wanted?

Interpreting ‘favourable conservation status’ for large carnivores in Europe: how many are needed and how many are wanted?

Conserving plant diversity in Europe: outcomes, criticisms and perspectives of the Habitats Directive application in Italy

Comparing and contrasting threat assessments of plant species at the global and sub-global level

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