The EU CCS Directive transposition process and related issues in 26 European countries, comprising 24 EU member states, Norway and Croatia were studied in the EU FP7 project: “CGS Europe” in 2011-2012. By the end of 2011 the transposition of the Directive into national law had been approved by the European Commission (EC) in Spain only, but had been approved at national/jurisdictional level in 12 other countries (Austria, Denmark, Estonia, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Sweden) and two regions of Belgium. By January 2012, the European Commission had assessed and approved national submissions of CCS legal acts transposing the Directive in Denmark, France, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands and Slovenia. Implementation in the UK was completed in February 2012 and by end March 2012, implementation at national level was also complete in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Portugal and Romania.
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RBINS Staff Publications
Red wood ants (RWAs) are a group of keystone species widespread in temperate and boreal forests of the Northern Hemisphere. Despite this, there is increasing evidence of local declines and extinctions. We reviewed the current protection status of RWAs throughout Europe and their International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) threat classification. Only some RWA species have been assessed at a global scale, and not all national red lists of the countries where RWAs are present include these species. Different assessment criteria, inventory approaches, and risk categories are used in different countries, and data deficiency is frequent. Legislative protection is even more complex, with some countries protecting RWAs implicitly together with the wildlife fauna and others explicitly protecting the whole group or particular species. This complexity often occurs within countries, for example, in Italy, where, outside of the Alps, only the introduced species are protected, whereas the native species, which are in decline, are not. Therefore, an international, coordinated framework is needed for the protection of RWAs. This first requires that the conservation target should be defined. Due to the similar morphology, complex taxonomy, and frequent hybridization, protecting the entire RWA group seems a more efficient strategy than protecting single species, although with a distinction between autochthonous and introduced species. Second, an update of the current distribution of RWA species is needed throughout Europe. Third, a protection law cannot be effective without the collaboration of forest managers, whose activity influences RWA habitat. Finally, RWA mounds offer a peculiar microhabitat, hosting a multitude of taxa, some of which are obligate myrmecophilous species on the IUCN Red List. Therefore, RWAs’ role as umbrella species could facilitate their protection if they are considered not only as target species but also as providers of species-rich microhabitats.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2022
