Law can influence conservation translocations in two basic ways: it can play a supportive and/or a restrictive role. Regarding the first role, legislation can provide support, a mandate, and/or an obligation to consider or perform a translocation. This may involve both general obligations to conserve or restore certain species or ecosystems, as well as specific obligations concerning species reintroductions or other types of translocation. Regarding the second role, legislation can impose limitations on translocation possibilities and/or make translocations conditional on meeting certain requirements. Such limitations and conditions may follow from legislation on native species protection, area protection, invasive non-native species, disease, trade, animal welfare, and several other areas of law. Requirements of both types may flow from international and national law. The legal requirements that will apply to any projected conservation translocation will depend on the countries, areas, and species involved, and there may be significant differences between one project and the next. The applicable requirements may be easy to meet for some projects, and be prohibitive for others. It is crucial that a careful analysis of applicable domestic legislation is carried out in the early stages of any contemplated conservation translocation. Practitioners should also make themselves aware of the relevant international legislation to provide them with the wider legal context of their work, and to help them influence the development of future legislation.

Conflict is a dominant notion within the legal discipline. In this chapter, I review some roles that law and legal research play with respect to conservation conflicts. I first introduce briefly law and legal research and then discuss the respective roles of law and legal research with regard to conservation conflicts. Although I focus my discussion on Europe, many if not most of the general principles are applicable elsewhere.

Law

Although most people have a general idea of what law is about, a universally accepted definition is lacking. In essence, law is a set of agreements, of various origins and serving various purposes. Those purposes include promoting and safeguarding different societal interests, for example the equality and individual freedoms of citizens, and the protection of health, safety and the natural environment – including biodiversity. One representative definition describes law as the sum of all rules and prescriptions for the promotion and protection of societal interests that have been publicly (governmentally) established and/or recognised and are, where necessary, enforced through penalties (Uylenburg and Vogelezang-Stoute, 2008).

Law serves several functions. Principally, it provides norms and safeguards. Law indicates what conduct is and is not permitted in society, and offers citizens the possibility to seek compliance by others with the rules involved. Furthermore, law provides a means for avoiding, mitigating and settling conflicts in society. Last but not least, governments use law as an instrument to achieve all manner of policy objectives – including nature conservation objectives.

A major source of law is legislation (i.e. the issuing of written, binding rules) by governments and other public entities at international, national, subnational and lower governmental levels. Other sources include judicial rulings (court decisions) and customary law (unwritten rules created through practice). Within domestic legal systems, a distinction can be drawn between private law (primarily concerned with relations between citizens or other private parties like companies) and public law (primarily concerned with the promotion of public interests).