The European Union needs a new strategy to conserve its biodiversity, as it has skewed funding for charismatic animals such as the bear, the wolf and the lynx. The conclusion has just come out in a article scientific of the prestigious journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society B”, which includes Portuguese from the universities of Minho, Porto and Helsinki (Finland) among the authors.
Scientists evaluated LIFE Program projects for animal species that were funded by the EU between 1992 and 2018. For Ronaldo Sousa, researcher at the Center for Molecular and Environmental Biology (CBMA) and professor at the Department of Biology at the UMinho School of Sciences, support for projects with vertebrate species was six times greater than with invertebrates (970 versus 150 million euros). In fact, birds and mammals represented 72% of the species covered and 75% of the total budget allocated.
The species that "received" the most funds were the bear (Ursus arctos), the wolf (Canis lupus), the birch (botaurus stellaris), the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) and the Iberian lynx (lynx pardinus).
Only 0.06% of invertebrates supported
This bias in the conservation effort is even more evident when we observe that Europe has around 1800 vertebrate species and 130.300 known invertebrate species, says Manuel Lopes-Lima, from the Center for Research in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources (CIBIO) of the University of Porto.
In the period considered, the LIFE Program covered 23% of vertebrates and only 0,06% of invertebrates in the EU, emphasizes Pedro Cardoso, from the University of Helsinki.
According to Ricardo Correia, from the same Finnish academy, the conservation effort is mainly explained by the species' popularity (measured by the volume of online research in the last ten years), rather than its real risk of extinction.
The article now published, “Towards a taxonomically unbiased European Union biodiversity strategy for 2030”, also brings together authors from institutions in Italy and France. The Habitats Directive and the LIFE Program were evaluated in this study with the aim of supporting the sector's future agenda.
The new EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030 was launched in May and proposes to revolutionize the way nature conservation is done, with a large investment (estimated at 20 billion euros a year, if we include mitigation of the effects of climate change) for the protection of biodiversity and its habitats.
There is a "pressing need" for the EU to change its paradigm in this area, which includes revising the list of species contained in the Habitats Directive, paying attention to the conservation of truly threatened species and their habitats, making a more equitable financial investment that allows for a reduction the inequalities between supported vertebrate and invertebrate species, and also the greater involvement of citizens, for example, in environmental monitoring campaigns, justify the authors of the study now published. Only then will the EU lead the world by example and action when it comes to biodiversity conservation, they add.
Author: Communication and Image Office – University of Minho
© 2020 – Science in the Regional Press / Ciência Viva
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