Wolves not welcome? Zoning for large carnivore conservation and management under the Bern Convention and EU Habitats Directive

• Date: 01 November 2018
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• Author: Arie Trouwborst
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/reel.12249

REGULAR ARTICLE

Wolves not welcome? Zoning for large carnivore conservation

and management under the Bern Convention and EU Habitats

Directive

Arie Trouwborst

Correspondence

Email: a.trouwborst@tilburguniversity.edu With some exceptions,populations of bears, wolves, lynxand other large carnivores are

recovering across Europe. Zoning is one of the means available to public authorities to

promote large carnivore conservation while minimizing conflicts with human interests.

In principle, this can entail designating zones where large carnivore conservation is pri-

oritized over conflicting human interests, but also zones where the population density

of large carnivores is adjustedto human activities, including low-density areas or exclu-

sion zones. Zoning as a large carnivore conservation and management tool is explored

here in light of twoinfluential European legal instruments, the Bern Conventionand the

EU Habitats Directive.The article finds that, first, thevarious legal regimes that apply to

large carnivores under these instruments in different parts of Europe by themselves

provide for a distinctdegree of high-level zoning. Second,and importantly, the Conven-

tion and Directivedetermine the legal bandwidth withinwhich domestic authorities can

design and implement morespecific (sub)national zoning regimes.

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INTRODUCTION

Europe is home to several species of large terrestrial predators,

including brown bear (Ursus arctos), Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), Iberian

lynx (Lynx pardinus), wolverine (Gulo gulo), wolf (Canis lupus) and

golden jackal (Canis aureus). The remarkable recovery of many popu-

lations of these species in recent decades has been well docu-

mented.

1

Whereas this carnivore comeback is a success story from a

biodiversity conservation perspective, it also gives rise to conflict

with human interests, for instance through livestock depredation,

competition with human hunters and human safety concerns.

2

Such

conflicts over human–carnivore coexistence can become especially

intense when predators return to areas and countries from which

they were exterminated long ago. Public authorities then face diffi-

cult challenges regarding how to combine large carnivore conserva-

tion with conflicting human interests.

3

Zoning constitutes one of various available means for such

authorities to pursue objectives regarding the conservation and man-

agement of large carnivores, including the minimization of conflict.

4

Three sets of actions can be distinguished which can be used to

reduce the spatial overlap between large carnivores and conflicting

human activities:

(i) manipulate large carnivore density;

(ii) adjust the way conflicting activities are conducted;

(iii) remove the potentially conflicting activity from carnivore range.

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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any

medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

©2018 The Authors. Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

1

See, e.g., G Chapron et al, ‘Recovery of Large Carnivores in Europe’s Modern Human-

Dominated Landscapes’(2014) 346 Science 1517; L Boitani and JDC Linnell, ‘Bringing Large

Mammals Back: Large Carnivores in Europe’in M Pereira and L Navarro (eds), Rewilding

European Landscapes (Springer 2015) 67; A Trouwborst, M Krofel and JDC Linnell, ‘Legal

Implications of Range Expansions in a Terrestrial Carnivore: The Case of the Golden Jackal

(Canis aureus) in Europe’(2015) 24 Biodiversity and Conservation 2593.

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Chapron et al (n 1).

3

See, e.g., A Treves et al, ‘Predators and the Public Trust’(2017) 92 Biological Reviews 248;

and S Redpath et al, ‘Don’t Forget to Look Down –Collaborative Approaches to Predator

Conservation’(2017) 92 Biological Reviews 2157.

4

JDC Linnell et al, ‘Zoning as a Means of Mitigating Conflicts with Large Carnivores:

Principles and Reality’in R Woodroffe, S Thirgood and A Rabinowitz (eds), People and Wild-

life: Conflict or Coexistence? (Cambridge University Press 2005) 162.

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ibid 165.

DOI: 10.1111/reel.12249

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wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/reel RECIEL. 2018;27:306–319.