Canid colonists 393
conventional legal texts are becoming increasingly unfit to inform a meaningful assessment. In this respect, reliance on whatever is deemed to be
natural as a measure to decide a species’ fate in any given habitat is progressively becoming inappropriate. In the Anthropocene the natural is being substituted by human agency, and we therefore have a responsibility to exercise discretion in deciding where, and possibly if, a given species shall persist or disappear. Thus, a new vision and new rules are needed that transcend the nature/human dichotomy. In themeantime it befalls upon legal scholars and courts,
through traditional interpretative methods, to reconnect the normative realm implicit in existing wildlife law with an em- pirical reality that is becoming disengaged from it. The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD; ratified by nearly all states except the USA) requires its 196 parties to ‘[p]revent the introduction of, control or eradicate those alien species which threaten ecosystems, habitats or species’ (Article 8(h)). Similar requirements feature in other inter- national legal instruments, such as:
. 1979 Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), Articles III(4)(c) and V(5)(e);
. 2003 (revised) African Convention on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, Article IX(2)(h);
. 1992 Convention for the Conservation of the Bio- diversity and the Protection of Wilderness Areas in Central America, Article 24;
. 1979 Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats (Bern Convention), Article 11(2)(b);
. 1992 EU Directive 92/43/EEC on the Conservation of Natural Habitats and of Wild Fauna and Flora, Article
22(b);
. 2014 EU Regulation 1143/2014 on the Prevention and Management of the Introduction and Spread of Invasive Alien Species (IAS Regulation).
Many national laws likewise aim to prevent introductions of invasive alien species and, when this fails, to control or eradicate them when feasible. The question by R. Kays signals uncertainty regarding
whether the coyote qualifies as an alien species in places such as Panama and Cape Breton Island. Confusion is ap- parent even within the IUCN Red List. The coyote assess- ment (Kays, 2018) considers the species native in all 10 countries where it occurs: the USA, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. However, the assessment of Dice’s cottontail Sylvilagus dicei asserts that the coyote is a non-native carnivore in Costa Rica, where it poses a threat to the endemic rabbit, while simultaneously conceding that the coyote arrived in Costa Rica through a ‘natural range expan- sion south following cattle’ (Mora et al., 2016,p. 3).
Useful guidance is forthcoming fromtheCBDConference
of the Parties, which has defined an ‘alien species’ as a species ‘introduced outside its natural past or present distribution’ (CBD COP Decision VI/23, 2002, Annex). Introduction is understood as the ‘movement by human agency, indirect or direct,’ of a species ‘outside of its natural range (past or pre- sent)’. The element of introduction by human agency also features in the definition of alien species employed in the EU’s Invasive Alien Species Regulation: ‘any live specimen of a species, subspecies or lower taxon of animals .. . intro- duced outside its natural range’ (Article 3(1)).Under both in- struments, an alien species is considered invasive when it threatens native biodiversity. A canine example of such an invasive alien species is the
red fox Vulpes vulpes in Australia, where it was introduced in themid 1800s for sport hunting, to the detriment of many native species (Global Invasive Species Database, 2018). A European example of an invasive alien canid is the raccoon dog Nyctereutes procyonoides, introduced into the western part of the former Soviet Union in 1920–1950 and spreading across Europe since (Kauhala & Saeki, 2016). The latter example also illustrates how species, once introduced by human agency, continue to carry their alien species status when subsequently expanding by their own agency into neighbouring countries. In contrast, canids colonizing areas beyond their former
ranges entirely on their own would not seem to qualify as alien species, and therefore neither as invasive alien species, regardless of their impact on local biodiversity. Put another way, the mere fact that a species cannot be shown to have historically occurred in a place does not make it an alien species there (see also Trouwborst et al., 2015). Yet, how liberally should the concept of ‘movement by
human agency, indirect or direct’, from the CBD definition, be interpreted? Clearly, it encompasses organisms inten- tionally or accidentally trucked, shipped, flown or otherwise physically transported by people. But can the definition also encompass cases in which a range extension is somehow provoked or facilitated by humans? The tentative answer would seem to be no. For instance,
the EU’s Invasive Alien Species Regulation ‘applies to all invasive alien species’ and therefore does not apply to ‘spe- cies changing their natural range without human interven- tion, in response to changing ecological conditions and climate change’ (Article 2(1)-(2)). Another pointer is a Recommendation by the BernConvention’s parties concern- ing range shifts driven by human-induced climate change. Concerned that ‘native species moving to neighbouring areas may be considered as alien due to the fact that climate change is the result of human action and that such species may be unnecessarily controlled’, the parties expressly inter- preted the termalien species as ‘not including native species naturally extending their range in response to climate change’ (Recommendation No. 142, 2009, par. 1). Parties to
Oryx, 2020, 54(3), 392–394 © 2019 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605318001229
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