1. Toothless wildlife protection laws
- Author
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Miguel Rico, Luis Llaneza, Francisco Álvares, José Vicente López-Bao, Yolanda Cortés, Guillaume Chapron, Emilio J. García, Vicente Palacios, Raquel Godinho, Alejandro Rodríguez, Víctor Sazatornil, and Juan Carlos Blanco
- Subjects
Carnivore (software) ,Ecology ,Multitude ,Endangered species ,Biodiversity ,Legislation ,Rule of law ,Wildlife protection ,Law ,Political science ,media_common.cataloged_instance ,European union ,Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics ,Nature and Landscape Conservation ,media_common - Abstract
Granting legal protection to an endangered species has long been considered a major milestone for its conservation and recovery. A multitude of examples such as wolves in the contiguous USA (Boitani 2003) or many large carnivore populations in Europe (Chapron et al. 2014) have revealed how instrumental wildlife protection laws can be for species recovery. However, legal obligations to conserve endangered species may be useless if the rule of law is not properly enforced. Such situation is not exclusive to countries with political instability or weak institutional capacities but can also be relevant, for instance, to member states of the European Union and therefore bound to European legislation on nature conservation.
- Published
- 2015