Don’t think local! Scale in conservation, parochialism, dogmatic bureaucracy and the implementing of the European Directives

The strictly target-based approach promoted by the European Community Directives (Bird 79/409 and 147/2009; Habitat 92/43/CE) is strategic allowing the conservation of targets in real contexts (i.e. the sites of conservation comprising the Natura 2000 network). Nevertheless the site-specific Standard Data Forms (SDFs), reporting lists of conservation targets (species and habitat types), although often incomplete, are regularly utilized by conservation practitioners of Public Agencies in an uncritical and bureaucratic way. We think that a lack of awareness on how populations, communities and ecosystems work may induce a parochialism and a consequent ineffectiveness of the conservation actions. In this commentary we would suggest some fundamental concepts in ecology that may have strong implications on the procedures carried out in conservation measures, synthesizing all in a conceptual framework. In particular, when approaching to develop site-specific conservation measures, practitioners should critically work to complete the lists of targets reported in SDFs verifying: (i) the target relevance in a wider context (spatial scale of target populations), also compared to other co-occurring common species; (ii) the type of target rarity (if deterministic or stochastic); (iii) the target role (per se or as indicator); (iv) the coherence between historical/geographic context and conservation measures developed. Finally they should be aware of the hierarchic relationships among different ecological levels interested (individuals, populations, communities, ecosystems).