The 44th meeting of the Standing Committee of the Berne Convention will rule this Tuesday on whether to lower the protection status of the wolf, as proposed by the Council of the European Union, made up of the Governments of the 27 community countries.
The decision adopted on September 26 by the Ministers of Competitiveness (Internal Market and Industry), with the rejection of Spain, ratified the vote of the previous day in the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the EU (Coreper), made up of ambassadors from the member countries of the European community.
The Twenty-seven proposed to the Berne Convention, based in Strasbourg (France) and of which the Council of Europe is depositary, that the wolf is classified as “protected” and not “strictly protected”as currently in the Convention, relating to the conservation of wildlife and the natural environment in Europe, and in force since 1982.
What happens in Spain
In this way, EU countries supported the proposal launched by the European Commission in December last year. However, that decision, if approved by the Berne Convention, would not affect Spain, which has its own regulations in this regard and the wolf has been a protected species throughout the country since September 2021. Before, it was a species considered hunting in the north of the Duero, so in that area Sport hunting was allowed.
Furthermore, Spain has a strategy that sets the conservation objectives of the species, that the species lacks a favorable conservation status, which prevents reducing its protection.
According to the EU Council, the regulatory change will give “more flexibility to address the socio-economic challenges arising from the continued expansion of the wolf’s distribution in Europe”, while maintaining “a favorable conservation status for all wolf populations in the EU.”
Currently, the wolf is listed as a ‘strictly protected’ species in the Appendix II of the Berne Convention. The parties to the Convention must adopt measures for its conservation.
According to the Council of the EU, the conservation status of the wolf has shown “a positive trend” in recent decades and the species has “successfully” recovered throughout the European continent with an estimated population that has almost doubled in 10 years (from 11,193 individuals in 2012 to 20,300 in 2023).
This continued expansion has generated socio-economic problems, particularly with regard to coexistence with human activities and damage to livestock. According to the latest data available from Member States, wolves kill at least 65,500 head of cattle each year in the EU.
When would it be applied
The proposed amendment seeks to include the wolf as a ‘protected’ species (moving it to Appendix III of the Berne Convention). This means that their protection must be guaranteed through appropriate and necessary measures. Any exploitation of the species must keep the wolf population out of danger and align with the scientific and ecological requirementsamong others.
To be approved, it must be adopted by two-thirds of the contracting parties to the Berne Convention. Changes to the annexes enter into force three months after their adoption, unless at least one third of the parties to the Convention object within that quarter, in which case will not come into force.
Yeah less than a third of the parts is opposed, the decision will enter into force only for Parties that have not notified objections.
The EU proposal is not the first concerning wolf protection in Europe. In 2022, Switzerland presented a similar proposal that was rejected. Others have also been made relating to other species. In 2019, Norway proposed modifying the protection status of the barnacle goose (‘Branta leucopsis’), which was also rejected.
The change in the level of protection would not be immediately applicable in the EU. Once the modification of the annexes to the Berne Conventionthe EU could amend the relevant annexes to the Habitats Directive – the EU legislation that implements the Berne Convention – to adapt the level of protection for wolves in its domestic legal system.
More than 300 NGOs and hundreds of thousands of people subscribed a manifesto in which they called on EU countries to intensify efforts to coexist between wolves and populations that depend on livestock, and to maintain their protection.
For its part, the Royal Spanish Hunting Federation (RFEC) has pointed out that the Spanish Government “remove the wolf from the list of protected species and implement a management plan for the species” in the event that the amendment is approved in the Berne Convention.
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