I am an outdoorsman, podcaster and speaker. I talk and write about the natural environment, biodiversity, conservation, hunting and fishing, rewilding and more. I am particularly interested in wildlife and human-wildlife interactions. I enjoy reading scientific papers on those subjects as much as being outdoors weathering the elements and getting first-hand experiences.
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Wildlife Law in Europe
Published about 1 hour ago • 4 min read
Conservation and Science
It often happens that while recording an episode I feel the conversation could go on for three hours straight. Unfortunately, I don't have the means to pull that off comfortably. I think it's only possible in a face-to-face setting, not remotely. This episode was no different, so I think we only touched lightly on issues like badger culling or the lowering of wolf protection in the EU. And while the latter was covered at great length in my show, the former got almost no mention at all. Luckily, the episode has an entire peer-reviewed research paper behind it and better still, it's open access. So if you're interested in the topic of nature protection law and policy, you can dive deep into it.
One observation is that at times the paper reads like advocacy and uses emotional language, which struck me as odd in a research paper. However, I'm noticing this in more and more papers recently. Also, it seems to me, from my cursory look into this issue, that it's a common convention in legal scholarship, where arguing a position is the norm. Perhaps that explains it or perhaps we are so far behind in nature protection that such an approach has become acceptable more widely.
The feature article in this newsletter is a bit different, as it has more to do with the changes I'm making to my podcast publishing and my related media presence. Since you are a subscriber to my newsletter, this doesn't affect how you stay in touch with my work - you are already in the best place - but I'd like to share my thoughts with you anyway. It is part of my effort to focus on deep conversations and long-form work, rather than feeding the infinite-scroll zombies. I think the rampant lack of focus, and the distractibility that comes with it, is a serious issue with serious consequences. Consequences for health, for society and for politics. So we need to talk about it.
Wildlife Law in Europe
What does the label 'protected area' actually tell you about what is being protected? How did the wolf lose its strict protection status in the EU? And what about a legal system that looks strong on paper but leaves animals exposed on the ground? Those questions sit at the heart of 'Protecting Wildlife in Europe: A Comprehensive Analysis of Legislative Frameworks and Their Shortcomings', a paper published in July this year in the Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy. Today I'm joined by both of its authors. Caroline Cox is an Associate Professor in Wildlife Crime and Policy at the University of Portsmouth. Dr Meganne Natali is a lawyer and legal consultant specialising in wildlife crime, zoonoses prevention and biodiversity conservation. She is also a Visiting Fellow at the University of Portsmouth School of Law. Europe has strong institutions, extensive legislation and considerable scientific knowledge. What it doesn't have, they argue, is a body of law that treats wild animals as individuals capable of suffering rather than as stock, functions and entries in an annex.
Caroline and Meganne first met at a conference in Florence and have worked together ever since. Caroline spent years on elephant poaching and the illegal ivory trade before turning her attention to wildlife closer to home. Our conversation starts with fragmentation. EU wildlife law is not one system but several layers sitting on top of each other. The Birds Directive, the Habitats Directive, CITES and national legislation each bring their own lists of species, different listings trigger different levels of protection, and implementation is left to member states. From there we move to national parks. In England and Wales the framework dates to 1949, with two aims that regularly collide, conserving the landscape and giving everyone access to it. Caroline lives in the New Forest and describes what happens there when too many visitors arrive at once. We also get into the badger cull and its link to bovine TB.
The wolf takes up a good part of the episode, as it tends to on this podcast. Meganne explains how a species whose numbers grew from around 11,000 animals in 2012 to more than 20,000 in 2023 was moved from Annex IV to Annex V, and what that does and does not change for member states and for wolves. That opens a bigger question about whether protection status should be settled by ecologists or by politicians. There is also a problem with defending wildlife on economic grounds. The same argument runs the other way the moment an animal becomes costly. We also talk about social inequality, compensation for farmers and who ends up carrying the cost of conservation.
I grabbed my phone, something I had learned not to do habitually, and opened Instagram to post about the latest episode of my podcast. But of course, the app opened on my feed, and despite knowing how it’s designed to grab my attention and keep me there, and how to avoid it, it did exactly what it was meant to do. It grabbed my attention, and before posting anything I swiped my finger across the screen, this time habitually, to scroll through the timeline. After a two-month break, two months of Instagram not being a thing in my life, I couldn’t believe how bad the experience was. In one word: slop. A bombardment of images and videos I wasn’t even sure were real, most with shouty text overlays. As I scrolled, it all became one mangled stream of optical noise. I guess that after two months my brain had unlearned how to distinguish separate posts in this visual river, and that allowed me to see it for what it is. An infinite brain-numbing feed designed for one thing: to hijack my attention away from anything useful or fun I could be doing, so it can show me ads. Sure enough, what caught my eye instantly in this noisy sludge were the banners: ‘get offer’, ‘learn more’ and, of course, ‘shop now’. Shortly after, my scrolling was blocked by a pop-up: ‘ad break’. That was enough to jolt me out of my stupor. I closed the app and ended up not posting anything. I wanted no part of it, and more importantly, I didn’t want to be part of it. Read more...
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I am an outdoorsman, podcaster and speaker. I talk and write about the natural environment, biodiversity, conservation, hunting and fishing, rewilding and more. I am particularly interested in wildlife and human-wildlife interactions. I enjoy reading scientific papers on those subjects as much as being outdoors weathering the elements and getting first-hand experiences.
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