Claws & Laws

Information

Project: The now complected project Courts & Conservation was about documenting and understanding litigation as a conservation tool in the European Union. We mapped the extent, scope, nature, and outcome of public interest litigation for species protection in the EU.

Scope of the database: We collected administrative and civil court cases about the direct protection of wild animal species in the EU and present the cases in a searchable database on this website. All 27 EU Member States are covered (the lack of Cypriot court rulings in the database is because we could not find any). The court case coverage starts from 2000 or the Member State’s later year of EU entry. All court instances in every Member State, from lower courts to supreme courts, are also covered. The relevant laws in the EU are the Birds Directive and the Habitats Directive. We focus on litigation where members of the public, typically non-governmental organizations, take legal actions against local or governmental authorities for decisions, actions, or failures to act regarding species.

Project team: We are legal scholars and ecologists collaborating in interdisciplinary research about law and biodiversity conservation. Many of us are especially interested in large carnivores.

Ethical approval: The project is approved by Etikprövningsmyndigheten (permit 2022-04786-01) and complies with GDPR. For legal reasons, we are not able to publish online all information we have on the court cases.

Acknowledgements: We are most grateful to the network of legal consultants having conducted the court case collection. We also warmly thank the legal scholars and lawyers in each EU member state who have reviewed the work of the legal consultants.

Funding: The project was funded by FORMAS, the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development (project ID 2019-00927_Formas).

Contributing updates: We would be interested in receiving any documents, such as court rulings, parliamentary bills or updated laws, that are relevant species protection conservation in Europe. We are particularly interested in documents about large carnivore conservation. Please send us information by emailing to data@clawsandlaws.eu. You will contribute to important legal-conservation research and capacity building on species protection.