The mainstay of biodiversity protection in the EU rests on two directives: the first, for birds (the Birds Directive), adopted in 1979; and the other, for habitats and species that are not birds (the Habitats Directive), approved in 1992.
Among the requirements, member states are obliged to designate areas for the protection of those species or habitats that were considered by ecologists to be of highest ecological value, or which were particularly rare or threatened: Special Protection Areas (SPAs) for birds, Special Areas of Conservation (Sacs) for the rest. In Ireland, these include native forests, bogs, sand dunes, otters, bats and kingfishers.
Taken together, the network of SPAs and Sacs are referred to as Natura 2000 and are, according to the European Environment Agency “the largest co-ordinated network of protected areas in the world”.
The extent of Natura 2000 across Europe continues to grow, but the latest data indicate that it covers 18.6 per cent of land and 9 per cent of seas. In Ireland, coverage is below the national average, encompassing 13.2 per cent of land and 7.7 per cent of the Celtic Seas marine region (seas including Ireland but stretching from Northern Spain to Scotland). These figures fall short of the EU-wide commitment to protect 30 per cent of land and sea by 2030, a target set at Cop15 in Montreal, Canada, in 2023, which was like a Paris Agreement for biodiversity.
The effectiveness of Natura 2000 has been called into question. On the one hand, it has prompted some of Europe’s greatest conservation success stories, from the recovery of the Iberian Lynx from near extinction to the nature-friendly farming practices developed in the Burren in Co Clare. On the other hand, it has failed to stem the continued loss of biodiversity, something that was implicitly recognised in 2023 with the proposal for a Nature Restoration Law.
Natura 2000 requires member states to ensure habitats and species are in “favourable status” but lacks timelines, while the lists of species and habitats deemed worthy of protection in the early 1990s lack flexibility (unlike the endangered species Act in the United States). This has left many threatened species, especially in the marine environment (eg endangered shark species) outside the network.
Creating protected areas was never meant to the be-all and end-all of nature conservation, but they have a certain allure in the public imagination, which has come to expect lines on maps and (if you’re lucky) a sign announcing a site’s designated status mean measures are taken which provide the refuge that is so badly needed for nature.
Indeed, they are critical in providing space for nature in a crowded world but people are right to be shocked when the protection that is advertised is not delivered on the ground. While the health of individual Natura 2000 sites is not monitored and reported on, the status of 85 per cent of these “protected” habitats and 30 per cent of species (not including birds) in Ireland was found to be unfavourable/bad here at our last reporting to the European Commission (EC) in 2019 (an update report is due in 2026 but few are expecting results to be dramatically different).
In 2023, following a case taken by the EC, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) found Ireland had failed to implement the Habitats Directive and, in particular, had failed to identify measures to achieve favourable status within the 441 Irish Sacs. Meanwhile, “designation” is a dirty word among farming organisations and is a byword, particularly in the west of Ireland, for dispossession and devaluation of land. In essence, farmers were informed their land was designated, frequently only in writing, accompanied with technocratic language and dreaded lists of “activities requiring consent”.
There was a certain tragic irony that farmers have viewed the sweep of designations as “sterilising” their land in terms of development and income potential, when the land was also biologically being sterilised with little or no incentive for changes to farming practices.
The eruption of negativity around the ending of turf-cutting on Sacs designated for raised bogs during the early years of the 2010s, when politicians blamed bureaucrats in Brussels and Garda helicopters flew over the heads of protesting locals, made nature a toxic political issue that was followed by the defunding of the National Parks & Wildlife Service (NPWS). Rather than protecting our most important biodiversity sites, Natura 2000 has, in many cases, hastened their decline (incidentally, turf-cutting on Sacs continues, illegally, to this day and is subject to a separate case in the ECJ).
The ruling from the ECJ came at a time when the rehabilitation of the NPWS was also a political priority. Today, it is an independent State agency with more staff and money to spend on actual conservation initiatives. Problems remain, as you might expect, but today a more confident NPWS is ready to be a champion for nature – and Natura 2000 is top of its priorities.
NPWS director of nature conservation Ciara Carberry admits the saga has been long and “not always glorious”.
While the location of Natura 2000 sites is spread across the country, within urban as well as rural areas, most of the very large sites are in the west of Ireland, where Carberry says, many of those places coincided “with the places where it was hardest to make a living. So you had this coming together of having an obligation on Ireland to protect and designate these sites in places where people may already have been struggling to make a good livelihood ... and that can create a tension ... I think in places, justifiably so, there can be this perception that it was imposed on them, from outside, from up in Dublin, that we just drew a line on the map.”
She says the past four years, with the rebooting of the NPWS, they have worked “to address that perception in terms of working much better with communities” as well as being “more open and transparent”.
Much of the effort since the ECJ ruling has been around more accurately mapping Sac boundaries, completing the statutory protection process and developing “conservation objectives” for each site. These objectives make it clear to everyone what it means for the species or habitat to be in “favourable” status, and they have important ramifications for plans and projects that may have an impact upon them. This has been a “gigantic piece of work”, says Carberry but the process for all Natura 2000 sites is nearing completion.
The next step, and also a part of the ECJ ruling, is establishing measures on each site in order to meet the objectives. These can be protective measures (stopping bad things from happening) as well as proactive interventions, and usually a combination of both is needed. In addressing this challenge, the NPWS has developed an approach in close consultation with the commission, the outcome of which is a table of measures which are under way at each site and which, it is predicted, will allow for further analysis of what additional actions may be needed.
The NPWS leads this process but given that Natura 2000 sites include vast areas of mountain bogs, entire river systems where water quality is being impacted by all kinds of activity in the catchment, or coastal areas with different fishing activities, the NPWS is going to need the co-operation of a range of government departments (notably the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine) if we are to see these measures ultimately translate into positive trends for species and habitats.
Carberry is not shy in emphasising the challenge but is upbeat with regard to their engagement so far with other departments and State bodies. She maintains this process will be complete for all Sacs in two years, but works are already under way through dedicated funding specifically for Natura 2000 sites, which includes invasive species removal and deer management on some of their properties. There is also a “Natura communities and engagement” scheme for community groups and which is delivering €600,000 in 2025.
The language around Natura 2000 is technocratic and arcane and can create a gulf between distant government targets on one hand and protecting wildlife in places people know and love on the other.
Carbery concedes “there is a challenge as to how we get these stories out there”, but points to a positive experience at the 2024 ploughing championships where initial trepidation concerning farmer reaction gave way to warm engagement. The agency is beginning to put a human face on the bureaucracy. “It’s such a simple thing, but so important, that people have a human face, that’s local to them, that they can go and talk to.
“I do appreciate that there are people and communities who feel that having a Natura designation is stopping them from doing things they’d like to be doing. I’d like to see us get to a place where being in a Sac is a benefit to people and not a difficulty for them. If you live in a very special place, that should be a good thing and not a bad thing.”
