A victory

Changes to the annexes of the Habitats Directive?

FACE succeeded in ensuring that the European Parliament adopted a resolution late last year calling for changes to the Habitats Directive annexes regarding wolves. In the case of Latvia, the wolf is already listed in the fifth annex of the Habitats Directive, which allows for the species to be managed. In many European countries, the wolf population has risen rapidly over the last ten to twenty years, hunting is prohibited, and large-scale damage has begun. To address this, limited and controlled hunting would be permissible, as is the case in Latvia, but this is not possible because the majority of these wolf populations are included in the fourth annex of the Habitats Directive, which does not allow for hunting. The situation is similar for the Latvian lynx, which is also included in the fourth annex of the Habitats Directive. One of the solutions would be to set a precedent where animal populations that have reached a favourable conservation status are moved, for example, from the fourth to the fifth annex. If this were done for the lynx, we would be able to hunt it again in Latvia. It is a major achievement that FACE secured this European Parliament resolution. Will this change anything in the near future? Unlikely, but it is the first step in the right direction. It was also achieved that a dangerous clause regarding any hunting of large carnivores was removed from the resolution.