IUCN Motion: Predator Protection and Rewilding go hand in hand.

A motion for the WCC 2025 Congress to scale up protection, rewilding, coexistence and the Right of Nature.

Last week, we resubmitted a motion proposal for the IUCN World Conservation Commission 2025, having been asked to combine with another, similarly focused on efforts to support an end to predator persecution. Together we’re requesting that rewilding and coexistence be funded to support this, ensuring too that the most up to date scientific expertise and Rights of Nature frame-working be incorporated at the outset to avoid making further mistakes.

We are so grateful to have been considered and to have made it this far, it’s a competitive process, (hardly surprising with so many urgent needs going on in the environment and an ongoing lack of adequate resource) … but we remain hopeful that our motion might be voted in, as a lasting resolution to support the essential reverse in declines.

The motion, prompted by the decision taken by The Standing Committee of the Bern Convention, (6 December 2024), to delist the European Grey Wolf and lower its protection status, marks the first time in history that a species has been down-listed. Even worse, the decision ignored the science. Protection remains to be a significant and necessary tool, and the wolf is not yet out of the forest so to speak. Ironically, the wolf is being pushed out of the forest, as habitats continue to decline, species are pushed closer and closer to extinction and in fact, are forced into conflict with humans as they have increasingly less opportunity to exist naturally in the wild, (a wolf actually prefers to be away from harm/humans), in their natural environment, where they can hunt and behave in their preferred wild and natural (intelligent and emotional) way.

It's essential to point out that:

• 2/3 species protected under the EU Habitats Directive have poor or bad conservation status.

  
  

• 3/4 of natural habitats are in drastic decline due to habitat loss and overexploitation, invasive species, pollution and climate change. Much pressure comes from ever growing agriculture, forestry, fishery and polluting activities

Wolves are not the only predators facing these threats, all predators face a similar outlook… Take the cormorant, a piscivorous birds with a natural instinct to fish for survival, finds itself in the firing line, over conflict for with fisheries. Does this sound a little similar to the wolf / sheep, fox / game bird…. The list would is endless but the point is made.

A similar picture is true across the whole of the globe.

My colleague, Mark Fisher was reminded that cormorants were being culled in England as far back as 2005 when Government ignored its own research on population dynamics and licensed an annual cull of 3,000 cormorants just to assuage anglers . They claimed it was all those inland-adapted birds flooding in from the Low Countries and Germany that were eating all their fish. The prejudice still persists, 11,000 Cormorants were licensed to be culled in England in the five years up to 2022. An “Area-Based Cormorant Management Licence” application is still available from Natural England. The term often used by anglers to justify their prejudice is “a balance in nature” and “a balanced approach”. This anthropocentric view of balance ignores the complexity of nature and we need to be much more informed by ecological realities before implementing any plans.  

The current approach favours persecuting any species that eats something that interferes with our perceived needs (greeds), often because it is considered a threat to profit derived from farming. This is not a balanced view.  

Motion-IUCN WCC 2025.pdf

Download PDF • 109KB

So we are hopeful that should this motion be successfully voted for, it might result in a fortified approach, that leads with ecological integrity (not guess work or breadcrumbs) and helps raise much needed funds for rewilding at scale, restoration and coexistence  by acknowledging Natures Intrinsic Right to Exist.

We have got through to the final voting stage at the General Assembly. Fingers crossed that we'll get this over the line.

Thanks again to Antoinette Vermilye, our sponsors listed below and Juan Carlos Atienza and his team.

Cheetah Conservation Fund

Earth Day Network

Earth Law Center

Earth League International

InterEnvironment Institute

Lifescape International Inc – SPECIES