There is no documented background to the origin of the Birds Directive Annexes (although see Lang, J.T. 1982. The European Community Directive on bird conservation. Biological Conservation 22: 11-25 for early history of the BD). One can largely 'reverse engineer' Annex I from the criteria in Article 4(1).

For the Habitats Directive, the Annexes were largely read over from the Berne Convention on the conservation of European wildlife and natural habitats as they were in the late 1980s. Although that then just begs the question as to how they were derived. Certainly not through any systematic review.

Whilst not perfect, the Annexes have stood the test of time pretty well. Further useful information on the early history of both Directives can be obtained in the minutes of the various EU Committees that input to draft legal texts (given as footnotes to the Premable to the Directives), e.g. the Opinion of the Economic and Social Committee of 25/6 May 1977. These can be downloaded from the excellent EU website.

Some history and facts, the rest can be found on the official EU Site and on the Natura 2000 site for each associated country where detaisl will be found : The Birds Directive requires the establishment of Special Protection Areas (SPAs) for birds. The Habitats Directive similarly requires Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) to be designated for species other than birds, and for habitats. Together, SPAs and SACs make up the Natura 2000 network of protected areas. The Birds Directive adopted in 1979. These two directives are the basis of the creation of the Natura 2000 network of protected areas. The SPAs are designated directly by each EU Member State, while the SACs follow a more elaborated process: each EU Member State must compile a list of the best wildlife areas containing the habitats and species listed in the Habitats Directive; this list must then be submitted to the European Commission, after which an evaluation and selection process on European level will take place in order to become a Natura 2000 site. Members of the European Parliament in the plenary session of 3 February 2009 backed a report calling for further protection of Europe's wilderness. "The report also calls for more European funding to protect existing sites and "re-wild" ones that are currently being used by humans or agriculture. At present 13% of the forest zone of the EU is designated as Natura 2000 sites under the existing Birds and Habitats directive.

Thanks David. My own recherche also suggests that the annexes of the Bern Convention were the main source of information to create the annexes of the habitats directive. Apparently, later some expert commissions were involved when updating the lists during the EU east expansion. Perhaps somebody else can comment on this.

Thank you also Sandra, but this was not an answer to my question. I know how the directive works, but it is difficult to find out, how species were chosen to be listed on the annexes.

The process upon EU expansion has been that the Commission discusses with the new Member States additions to the Annexes that will be annexes. Typically, these are nearly always species restricted to the new MS, such that their addition does not add to 'aquis communitaire' or legal burden for other MS. However, for birds there have been a couple of instances when species were added to Annex I which were more widely occurring. This included, from memory, Charadrius alexandrinus and Limosa lapponica at the time when the Baltic States joined. But that was unusual and needed the consent of the other MSs (via the Ornis Committee) as obviously it had implications for potential SPA classifications in those countries also.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:1977:152:0003:0007:EN:PDF

Yes, but the same also seems to be true for other taxa (e.g. butterflies). Apparently the east expansion was used to get some more species listed (which makes some sense).

All anexes are entirely integrated in the sintaxonomical scheme for European Vegetation, which consists in a tipologycal hierarchy from classes to associations combining floristic elementes, allready published...they consist in concrete units..

I'm not sure if this provides any additional information on top of what has already been mentioned, but might be worth checking out:

http://www.pensoft.net/J_FILES/18/articles/1808/1808-G-3-layout.pdf

Axel mentioned also the 'commonness' of some of the species in the annexes. When Finland joined EU in 1995 quite many 'new species' became part of the EU area. There are species which are very common in Finland but living on their western limits with the main distribution area in the Russian taiga zone. Therefore, for example, the flying squirrel is strictly protected by Habitats Directive although it seems to be quite common in Finland. The main reasoning is that the Member State where it lives has the sole responsibility to maintain the population at a favourable level. Among birds there are similar examples, such as Goldeneye, etc. I have not been in the process myself and therefore I can't go to the details of this history...

@Samuli: The European responsibility plays an important role in the text of the Habitats Directive. It aims at protecting those species, for which the majority of the range lies in the EU. So the flying squirrel example does not make much sense to me... (although I really like flying squirrels).

Also occurs with Ruscus aculeatus in Flora matters...because its rare in England in the little mediterranean fringe that occurs in the SE...

This is an interesting discussion : the inequality of the north-south species in the Habitats directive annexes. For exemple, The ocellated lizard Timon lepidus is absent. The species lists annexes are old and without update : No species recently discovered (F exe. Rana pyrenaica). Maybe the species list have been established by northern european experts ?

Hi Jean-Marc, yes this is certainly a point, particularly as the annex of the Bern convention was already established in the end 1970s when the EU was much smaller!

In addition, there is an inequality taxonomic in the Habitats directive annex : Vertebrate- Invertebrate... Some groups are absent : algae, fungi, arachnida... It's a problem of the expert disponility.

Yes, definitely !

Endemic species of European bioregions are missing too !

There is no rationale other than subjective opinions of researchers (lobbyist?) from the time when the EU was much smaller

Yes, the EU missed the possibility to use a more strategic way to compile the list and just relied on existing lists (Bern convention) and available expertise for single taxonomic groups. This apparently led to the existing bias.

There are also grudging opinions from limited visions of lab and numerical ecology researchers that didn't had EU falling at their knees...Thats why the alleged subjectivity of the Sintaxonomical scheme for European Vegetation is often criticised..

Influencing such high-level international processes means strong engaging with political and governance issues and structures. Very few academics ever seem willing to do that (unfortunately).

I think the other thing to note is that we shouldn't judge the past by the standards and knowledge of the present. The 1970s were a very different place!

David, I absolutely agree. However, it took so many years for the Natura2000 network to be established. There would have been a possibility to reach a higher standard.

The knowledge is in a perpetual evolution. But, the annexes of these convention or directive are fixed in time. Species entry is complicated with their dynamic. Vegetation entry are better in conservation strategy.

Hi Jean-Marc. The species lists on the annexes are not fixed, because Article 19 of the directive allows for amendments of the annexes based upon technical or scientific progress. Actually, this has been used already two times during the two EU East expansions (2004 and 2007).

Yes you are right. In practice, it's not possible. Because, if you change the list of species or habitats, you must adapt the mapping of Natura 2000 in your country. In certain country (France...) it's not possible without creating an increase of social tensions.

Much of the history, pre 1992 is fairly hidden although there are fairly complete archives at the European Commission. I've published a little on the history of Annex I ( Interpreting the habitats of Annex I – Past, present and future) and more generally (Building the European Union’s Natura 2000 network) and have a paper on the changes due to the 2004 & 2007 enlargement in press (it will appear in a special edition of Environmental Conservation dedicated to Biodiversity Governance in Central and Eastern Europe). There is a student at Trinity College, Dublin, who is close to finishing a PhD on the history of the directive which should be interesting although he's a lawyer rather than a biologist.

As said above, revisions are possible, but require approval by the Council of Ministers - previous changes have been as part of treaties of countries joining the EU

Thank you Douglas. I have read your papers already and found your explanations concerning the history of annex I very useful. The thesis of your student will be very interesting for us as well, as we work in a interdisciplinary graduate school of natural scientists and lawyers.

He's not 'my student' although we have met. I'm not sure who is the supervisor but he's in the Department of Geography

I think there is a universal awareness among scientists of the lack of science behind the annex designations. Worst of all is that there is no possibility to uplist or down list as new information becomes available or if a species status changes for better or worst. In many cases it also appears that some values or politics dominate the process - for example bears are universally on annex IV which does not take into account that their population sizes vary from 6000 across different parts of europe. The issue is that they can't change annex designation without opening up the entire directive for discussion which was a major design flaw - however the Bern Convention also suffers from the same weakness.

Coming into this discussion, I believe the main problem is not the lack of science into site /species designation. Even good science does not establish consensus for designation because of taxonomic debate (what is the value of some species?) or because of the lack of congruence between taxonomic groups (birds, mamals, plants) to designate common hotspot. My main concern is in the lack of science in the assessment of the so-called "favourable conservation status" and in the lack of good data for appropriate site monitoring. There is a concern in France for developping indicators for both purposes but the fact that we are still in this debate after the N2000 network has run for many years clearly shows how late we are and how weak are our position for conservation in Europe.

@Didier: I think the taxonomic debate should not dominate the discussion, because this affects all taxa. We will never complete the taxonomy as new methods and data will always lead to taxonomic changes. Thus, we only can work with the taxonomic status as currently accepted (even if there is some debate about some taxa). I agree with you that the monitoring is a real problem. Here in Germany, the states (Bundesländer) agreed upon common standards, but these are not defined by scientific rigor, but by either the costs or the availability of already existing programs (even if they produce no valid data).

I couldn't agree more with Didier answer. I just would like to add that perhaps is not the lack of data the problem but the lack of harmonisation and common work at different spatial scales. Also in relation to the assessment of the so-called "favourable conservation status", the problem is that this exercise is not done by scientists but by experts and stakeholders without taking into consideration the research done behind in most of the sites. Therefore, integration of scientists on the assessment will be an important step forward at least for countries in Southern Europe where this is not common practice. France is just starting a country level project to produce continuous natural and semi natural habitats maps on an unprecedented efforts of different partners working together financed directly by Ministry of ecology. Few countries in Europe accomplished already this objective. Then is difficult to evaluate habitats when we do not have a harmonised spatial location of what needs to be evaluated...

With 27 (soon to be 28) countries, the methods used for the conservation assessments vary greatly, but in some countries scientists in universities & research agencies are involved even if a government agency has overall responsibility (& of course many such agencies employ scientists). But it is clear that there are many problems, including many related to the lack of reliable data. A report we wrote after the last reporting round outlines many of these problems, including the lack of comparable methods between countries despite using common guidelines (themselves far from perfect as they needed approval by all countries).

http://forum.eionet.europa.eu/x_habitat-art17report/library/papers_technical/completeness_coherence_1/download/1/c_Data_completeness_quality_%26_coherence_version%201.pdf

And even if there is variation, in the absence of the guidelines the reports would be impossible to compare between countries (as shown by the reports under the 1979 birds directive)

One disturbing example has come from Croatia's entry. The wanted to have bears on annex V an dhad good data to show that they had a healthy bear population and that hunter harvest was both necesary to regulate the size of the population and to maintain public acceptance. Despite Croatia arguing for it, despite the enlargement negotiation team arguing for it, it was rejcted because all the other countries had their bears on annex Iv. So much for science and so much for subsidarity.

There are some annexed species for which hunting may be a valid way of raising their profile, for example some freshwater crayfish, some salmonids. Blanket protection tends to result in invisibility for the general public, and stocks may be lost.

The directive does have Annex V (which includes Atlantic salmon & some other fish) for regulated exploitation (eg fishing, harvesting, etc). But it could be argued that Annex V is largely forgotten in practice

Yes, this is absolutely true. Maybe we should write a paper to remind conservationists that annex V exists!

That's a great idea!

"Does anybody know, how these lists have been compiled?"

At least in case of the version published in 2006, there were various debates, biogeographical seminars related to the list of the species, habitat types and even the limits of the bioregions from Romania (probably the same happened in case of Bulgaria).

Details on this later issue (bioregions) you can find in the article available at the following address: http://www.ddni.ro/manager/editor/UserFiles/File/Scientific%20annals/volume/14/19.pdf

We certainly have several common species that were already listed in the initial annexes, meanwhile some rare species were not accepted by the topic center to be included into the annexes.

Zsolt - it wasn't the topic centre who made decisions on what to accept or reject. The countries (usually ministries of Environment) made proposals, the ETC/BD made initial recommendations which were then discussed at a series of meetings between the candidate countries & the European Commission with approval needed from all the existing member states. Together with a couple of colleagues I have a paper in press (for a special issue of Environmental Conservation on Biodiversity Governance in Central and Eastern Europe ) which deals with how the annexes of the Habitats Directive were amended in 2004 & 2007. Once its on line I'll post it on my profile (hopefully very soon)

"it wasn't the topic centre who made decisions on what to accept or reject. The countries (usually ministries of Environment) made proposals"

I was referring to our topic centre, not to your one.

Next time I will use "national focal point", instead of "topic centre", because probably in case of this later expression everybody was thinking about the EU topic centre...

p.s. in 2007, after the amendments for Council Directive 2006/105/EC, there were other amendments?

No, 2007 was the last amendment. We just published a paper, in which we suggest that the choice of appendix species should follow scientific rather than policital criteria (e.g. Red Lists). The unedited version of the paper is already available online in Conservation Letters and I also posted it in my profile!

" Europe needs a new vision for a Natura 2020 network"

N2020?

that's nice...

EU is not able to manage the Natura 2000 network, so may be it will have a greater success with a Natura 2020 network

if not, than may be with a Natura 2040 network...

Zsolt -Too many 'topic centres" :-)

There will a few changes when Croatia joins later this year (2 new habitat types, 1 existing habitat described & a few spp to annexes II & IV)

Axel - I've read your paper, the problems you describe have long been known, if rarely discussed in print (see eg http://www.dmu.dk/fileadmin/Resources/DMU/Nyt/Arrangementer/2011/konference/Aarhus-Doug_Evans-revised.pdf) but do you really think your proposals are realistic ? I know from experience that legislation which keeps changing is a nightmare to implement

"do you really think your proposals are realistic ?"

what/which proposals?

l.e. oops! I have observed just now, that the question was related to a proposal made by Axel Hochkirch... :lol:

Douglas - I know that many of our thougths are not new, but we tried to develop a strategic concept out of it. I also know that EU bureaucracy is a nightmare. But on the other hand, the changes we suggested do not really require a lot of changes to the directive - just to its implementation. I am convinced that it does not make much sense only to think in realistic terms. Otherwise, the complete Aichi targets will be completely unrealistic and we will not make any progress at all. We have to show the politicians what is really needed if they want to fulfill their goals!

I agree with Doug (I think!) that from the point of view of the Member States who have to implement, there needs to be some stasis in order to give time to take actions. I'm not arguing to exclude strong candidate species, but a system that tried to track biological change would be very difficult to implement. In a slightly different context, that's the reason why Ramsar doesn't frequently change it's 1% thresholds used to select wetlands of international importance for waterbirds. These are typically revised on a 9 year cycle (see http://www.ramsar.org/pdf/res/key_res_vi.04e.pdf) which gives time to implement, rather than - for example - trying to annually revise in line with population size changes.

"trying to annually revise in line with population size changes"

annually?

may be in case of very rare species

or in case of states having the size of Liechtenstein

Any possibility to update the annexes regularly would be better than the current situation, which allows nearly no changes at all. The IUCN regularly updates its red lists and it should not be too complicated to do the same for the N2000 annexes. Why should we invest so much money and resources in gazetting reserves for unthreatened species and monitoring them, when so many others are highly threatened and not considered at all! This does not make much sense to me, even if the countries will need a lot of time for implementation.

Douglas

"There will a few changes when Croatia joins later this year (2 new habitat types, 1 existing habitat described & a few spp to annexes II & IV)"

Is there any chance to get some highly endangered insects on the annexes or is the decision already done?

Axel -The changes are in the treaty covering Croatia's membership of the EU which was signed last year. It includes 2 insects (Pachytrachis bosniacus, Protoerebia afra dalmata) which were proposed by the Croatian ministry, based, I imagine,on advice from Croatian scientists.

I agree that many of the problems are not with the Directive itself (although making Article 19 (which covers amending annexes) easier to use in practise rather than theory would help) but its implementation (which varies considerably from country to country). As for changes, I agree that some are needed (see the presentation I linked to earlier), just that I know from experience that administrations take time to react to changes in legislation and as David states, some stability is needed. Personally I think the 5 yearly review which was in the UK's 1981 Wildlife & Countryside Act might be appropriate (although maybe 6 yearly to link with Article 17 reporting for the Habitats Directive)

I understand that the species and habitats lists in the Anneces of the Directive represent the state of knowledge during the early 1990s and were certainly influenced by the way each Member State responded to and participated in the making of the Anneces. Of course, the lists were ammended with new Memeber States.

I fully agree that some changes are needed, but laws are difficult to change too often. Imagine the whole proccess of delimiting NATURA 2000 sites (based on the presence of Annex species and habitats) and establishing the national legislation for this and also persuading the general public to accept them and then changing standards every 5 or 6 years... Even reporting for Article 17 every 6 years seems quite often, since changes can rarely be detected in such small a period of time, unless there is a catastrophe. Nevertheless, this reporting is a good chance to collect and analyse data and to be on guard. So, I think that there may be proposals for reviews every 5-6 years, but that the actual revisions of Anneces could be every 10-12 years or more.

Pinelopi Delipetrou: "Even reporting for Article 17 every 6 years seems quite often, since changes can rarely be detected in such small a period of time, unless there is a catastrophe."

Probably the European Commission wants to collect at each 6 year some money from the member states in case of which it launches the infringement procedure. Taxation is the most simple method to collect funds for the EU budget. The nicest part of this procedure is that the guilty part will always be the member state, never the European Commission (including the cases when the EC makes the mistakes, actually...).

As far as I know, there were no infringement procedures as a result of the last round of Article 17 reporting although its clear that there could have been, if only for sending incomplete reports. And it would be a very inefficient way of raising revenue.

It has never crossed my mind that this could be a way of raising revenue. I may be naive but I thought that the frequency of the reporting was decided so as to ensure effective moitoring and management. If anything, it provides a job for biologists...

Douglas Evans: "there were no infringement procedures as a result of the last round of Article 17 reporting"

It is never too late...

Pinelopi Delipetrou: "It has never crossed my mind that this could be a way of raising revenue."

Well, what do You think the European Commission is doing all day long (other thing than thinking about raising revenue for the UE budget)?

There is absolutely no doubt that a lot of financial resources are needed to implement a more effective way of Natura2000 management and monitoring. But if the politicial will is there to stop biodiversity loss, there should also be an opportunity to invest money in conservation - just see how easy it was to spend billions of euro in saving banks...

Part of them come directly from Berna Convention

Zsolt - Have you ever been to Brussels ? you seem to have a very odd idea of what the commission (as in staff rather than the handfull of Commissioners who are political appointments) actually do

Douglas Evans: "ou seem to have a very odd idea of what the commission (as in staff rather than the handfull of Commissioners who are political appointments) actually do"

and... what the commission is actually doing?

(beyond issuing infringements and listening NGO-fairy tails...)

Well, I have been to Brussels regarding the amendments of the 92/43 Anneces for Cyprus, and my impression was that there is a lot of hard work (by the commission staff) involved in these procedures. This is also obvious in the various guidelines which are prepared for the implemention of Article 17 or the Water Directive. Nothing to do with fairy tales, although the implementation of all that high standard monitoring seems too good to be true.

well, if the commission is so perfect, than we also have to create an ETC in our country...

p.s. actually, there is an open call, related to this issue

We have to be precise: I said hard working not perfect.

Pinelopi Delipetrou: "I said hard working not perfect."

I don't really trust in these kinds of (mostly administrative) superstructures.

It is like IUCN: they are printing (at +/- regular intervals) some lists and... that's all.

p.s. and they probably have a lot of meetings to... talk about the next version(s) of the list(s).

There are pros and cons in both types of structures you are referring to, but I know first-hand that they both involve scientific work and that talking in their meetings is productive. The criteria set by IUCN for threat assessment are not the result of just talking but of years of experience in this field. One may dissagreee with the criteria, but I believe that they set a very helpful standard in species' assessments.

@Zsolt: I used to be also quite critical towards the IUCN red list criteria as they seem to have been developed mainly for vertebrates. Most of the necessary information is not available for invetrebrates (population sizes and trends). However, as I am meanwhile involved in red-listing myself, I find that the criteria work quite well. For example, one can use habitat loss as a proxy for population loss. There are only some minor issues, which I still think should be changed somehow. But in the end, I have the impression that it is mainly the lack of data, which hampers assessments.

It ias also not true that the IUCN is "printing (at +/s regular intervals) some lists and... that's all. The IUCN is very active in a lot of practical conservation projects and particularly active as an advisor of political bodies. Without the IUCN we would not have any "Convention on Biodiversity" or "Aichi Targets". And the IUCN is also the organization, which has initiated all the recent European red list assessments of several taxa. The only thing, which is missing is that these new data are not implemented directly in the habitats directive!

In fact its the 'useless' European Commission which took the initiative & paid for the recent European Red Lists (although the work was organised by IUCN). And the project is continuing with more plants being assessed at the moment

Yes, formally this is true, but as you probably know there is a very tight interaction between IUCN and the Commission. I am not quite sure if the Commission would have started without the IUCN, but of course I don't know in detail.

And I don't think it is helpful to be cynical and call the Commission 'useless'. Zsolt does not speak for a majority (although this view is probably widespread among European citizens...

my 'useless' was ironic (I'd hoped that was clear from the context but I guess its not always clear on the web)

Axel Hochkirch: "Zsolt does not speak for a majority (although this view is probably widespread among European citizens..."

Actually, I am speaking for myself. Not for a majority and not even for a minority. Probably it is very hard to quantify how many people are EU-skeptical ones, but it is quite obvious that in the last few years there is an increase in number of those whose opinions are different from the point of views of politicians and policy-making "technical staff-members" (generally known as "consultants").