Potential conflicts between environmental legislation and conservation exemplified by aquatic macrophytes |
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Authors: | Frauke Ecke Seppo Hellsten Marit Mjelde Minna Kuoppala Sabine Schlacke |
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Institution: | 1.Division of Geosciences, Landscape Ecology Group,Lule? University of Technology,Lule?,Sweden;2.Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment,Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences,Uppsala,Sweden;3.Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE),University of Oulu,Oulu,Finland;4.Norwegian Institute for Water Research,Oslo,Norway;5.Research Centre for European Environmental Law, Faculty of Law,University of Bremen,Bremen,Germany |
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Abstract: | It is important that legislation on water quality issues of freshwaters is not in conflict with nature conservation purposes.
So far, it is however unknown how the assessment of ecological status according to for example the Water Framework Directive
(WFD) of the European Community relates to the status of lakes according to the Habitat Directive (HD) or to national environmental
objectives including, e.g., the protection of important wetland areas and red-listed species. We used lake macrophyte classification
schemes of Norway, Sweden, and Finland and a total of 1,014 lakes to evaluate the possible conflict between these directives
and national legislation. The classification schemes represent mainly trophic indices penalizing lakes with elevated phosphorous
concentrations. In general, high ecological status according to the WFD did not mean high number of red-listed species or
high status according to the HD or other national environmental objectives. In Sweden 78%, in Norway 47%, and in Finland 29%
of lakes with red-listed species were classified as lakes of moderate or worse ecological status based on the macrophyte classification
scheme. These lakes thus did not fulfill the demands of the WFD. Restoration of surface water toward fulfilling the demands
requires in practice a reduction of the trophic status. This might potentially result in for example the loss of red-listed
species. To avoid such potential conflicts, we primarily suggest revising the national quality assessment systems toward implicitly
incorporating nature conservation aspects, e.g., the number of red-listed species in a multi-metric assessment system. |
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