As the climate crisis deepens, a European conference on ecological restoration heard that we need to greatly increase conservation investment and do a lot more to restore and manage the continent's ecosystems, writes Paddy Woodworth
'WE DID NOT invent nature. Nature invented us," Jurgen Tack of Belgium's Research Institute for Nature and Forest told a large gathering of conservationists in Ghent, Belgium, this month.
It was clear from many of the conference sessions and field trips, however, that we are currently reinventing nature in radical ways, with results that are increasingly difficult to predict. Tack wanted to remind us that nature is our parent, since it provides us with the essentials of life, but now it is our child as well.
This has been true for centuries in Europe, where human activity has modified most landscapes many times, and where real wilderness, if it exists at all, is extremely rare. Whether we like it or not, we are directly responsible for the survival (or otherwise) of many species and indeed entire ecoystems (see panel). Now, climate change is extending human impacts to places we have never even set foot upon. Despite impressive advances in EU environmental legislation in recent years, the conference heard many arguments that Europe needs to do a lot more to restore and manage its ecosystems as the climate crisis deepens.
The Sixth European Conference on Ecological Restoration focused on the state of the EU's Natura 2000 protected sites, set up under the EU Habitats Directive. Dr Richard Hobbs, one of the world's leading restoration ecologists, pointed out that establishing hundreds of such sites across 27 countries, with different ecosystems and, just as significantly, very different understandings of "nature", remains a remarkable achievement by international standards.
Nevertheless, session after session heard similar stories of how realities on the ground fall far short of ambitious targets on paper.
Many sites, designated for the protection of a single threatened species, have never had a full ecological survey, so the way they function is poorly understood. Management plans have still not been drawn up for a large number of sites. Where these plans do exist they are sometimes not implemented. It is hardly surprising, then, that 50 per cent of species protected under the Habitats Directive are still under serious threat.
CONNECTIVITY IS ANOTHER issue. Conservation obviously requires complex joined-up thinking, as it involves many scientific disciplines combined with socio-economic sensitivity. But it also needs joined-up sites if habitats are to flourish as dynamic elements within overall ecosystems.
"Natura 2000 is meant to be a network, but very few sites are actually connected to others in terms of their ecology," Ladislav Miko told the meeting. He heads up one of the EU environment directorates in Brussels, and was refreshingly open to new developments. "We need to create a functional green infrastructure in Europe," he said.
If animals and plants cannot migrate from one site to another, we may be condemning them to a slow decline. This was always true, and the argument for "green corridors" between sites is not new. But climate change is upping the pressure on many sites in ways we could not have predicted a few years ago, and this crisis is accelerating, as many speakers indicated in disturbing terms.
Seabird chicks are already starving to death in large numbers in several sites, because fish species that used to be their food source have already moved elsewhere. Their parents have to make longer and longer journeys in search of prey, and cannot feed the chicks frequently enough.
There were many discussions at the conference about what we should do in such circumstances. Should we de-designate sites when protected species move on elsewhere - assuming they can? Should we try to second-guess where they will turn up next? Should we then designate as protected these new sites, where no endangered species yet exists? Should we manipulate the ecosystems in such sites to help them adapt more easily to climate change? Should we actually crate up animals and plants and move them ourselves to more suitable sites, where no green corridors can be provided? Such scenarios are a new kind of nightmare for conservationists.
And both de-designation and new designations of protected areas are likely to spark further public controversies. Natura 2000 sites already attract much opposition - think of the bitter rows over sites designated for the protection of the hen harrier over the last few years in Ireland. Almost all of the "frequently asked questions" on the Natura section of the National Parks and Wildlife Service website, which designates Natura 2000 sites in Ireland, is dedicated to reassuring farmers about their property rights under the scheme, rather than stressing the benefits of conservation to the public at large.
Despite the many difficulties discussed, and the daunting prospect of rapid climate change, the tone of the conference was remarkably upbeat.
It was organised by the Society for Ecological Restoration International (SERI), a branch of conservation that explores ways to reverse ecosystem damage, or at least to assist degraded systems to recover many of their functions and typical species.
The fact that restoration is even possible surprises many people, as they are accustomed to hearing doom and gloom from environmentalists. In fact, there are now many instances around the world where ecosystem health has improved due to restoration, but they makes few headlines.
"We have painted Armageddons and disheartened the crowds," Sebastian Winkler, an EU environmental policy adviser, told the conference. "Protection and conservation have a negative ring to them. Restoration is much more positive."
Dr Jim Harris, chair of the SERI science committee, made a challenging contribution, arguing that climate change will force restorationists and policy-makers alike to rethink strategies such as Natura 2000. The current policy focuses on protecting individual species or habitats threatened with extinction or disappearance.
Harris argued that the coming climate crisis demands that we think much bigger, and implement an "Ecosystems Directive" rather than the current Habitats Directive. This would involve mapping the ecosystems of Europe to assess the "natural capital" and "ecoystem services" they provide us with. These include fisheries, forest products, flood prevention, clean water, fresh air, fertile soil, biodiversity and so on. Conservation strategy should then seek to restore degraded systems to their full productive capacity, taking into account the impact of changing weather patterns.
He is well aware that this proposal is controversial, not least because some property owners will find it very threatening. "But property has duties as well as rights," he insisted, arguing that a few individuals cannot block the right of the broad European community to a healthy environment.
His proposal also deeply worries some ecologists, who fear that a shift away from the protection of species to a focus on ecosystem services to human beings fatally undermines the case for conservation, and will lead to huge biodiversity losses.
Harris told The Irish Times that he is talking about "valuation" and not monetisation, and that biodiversity is itself a most valuable ecosystem service. Whether the planners will buy that argument is, of course, another matter.
THE MOST UPBEAT analysis at the meeting came from Dr Rudolf de Groot, a leading contributor to the UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. He outlined a number of convincing studies that show that investing in ecosystems brings, in many cases, much bigger financial returns than converting a natural or semi-natural system into an artificial one.
While acknowledging that nature is in some ways "priceless", he offered conservationists strong economic arguments for greatly increased conservation investment.
Strategies such as those proposed by Harris and de Groot demand that we change our mindsets, and rethink the relationship between the human economy and the natural world. They may be hard to grasp at first, but as we exhaust our natural resources and face into rapid climate change, hard thinking is sorely needed.
Outside the entrance to the conference building, someone had written in chalk a quote from Charles Darwin: "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change." Whether Homo sapiens is a sufficiently adaptable species for the times that are in it remains to be seen.
LET'S INTERFERE:HOW HUMANS CAN HELP NATURE
Many Natura 2000 sites need, paradoxically, constant human intervention if they are to remain "natural". We have altered landscapes so much through urbanisation and intensive farming that protected sites often need intensive management in order to survive exterior pressures.
This was illustrated on a visit to the Western Dunes (de Westhoek) nature reserve, on the Belgian-French border. "We have to interfere constantly in order to preserve this place," a ranger said.
This is the first reserve established in Flanders, in 1957, and it is one of the last areas of mobile dunes on the Belgian coast. Its 340 hectares contain 40 per cent of the wild plant species in the country, as well as the natterjack toad, a rare species also found in parts of Kerry, and birds such as the Kentish plover and hen harrier.
The survival of many of these plants and animals depends on the dune system retaining its natural dynamics, where wind, waves and sand interact to build dunes on the coast and then steadily shift them inland. Species protection without ecosystem protection is a self-defeating exercise.
The dunes used to move inland relentlessly, overwhelming human settlements and, on one occasion, burying a monastic settlement.
For centuries, however, the situation has reversed, and it is we who now limit the dunes, through housing developments, road building and concrete barriers along the coast.
Today only the middle section of the dunes is truly mobile, and even so it requires much "interference" in order to maintain its rich flora, including such activities as mowing, grazing, and occasional heavy engineering. And these dunes too must stabilise fairly soon, as there is nowhere left for them to move to. Can we continue to mimic nature through management at that stage, and save the system's flora and fauna? No one really knows.