The Law of Nature Conservation

Providing a detailed account of the law of nature conservation, this book reviews and discusses the way in which the law promotes the conservation of species of animal, bird, and plant, and how it protects natural habitats for protected species.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, the book sets nature conservation in its economic and scientific context. It explains how the law reconciles the public interest in promoting biodiversity and the conservation of species and habitats, on the one hand, and the private property rights of landowners and other resource appropriators on the other. The book offers an illuminating new interpretation of this area of environmental regulation using a resource allocation model of property rights to explain how legal and economic instruments for promoting nature conservation work in practice. The analysis covers all recent legislation and case law - including the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2010 and the 2012 National Planning Policy Framework.

The book will serve as a critical guide to UK nature conservation law for those working in the system, and a valuable reference point on the UK's approach to the area for environmental lawyers and policy-makers overseas.

Chris Rodgers is a Professor of Law and (since 2010) Head of School at Newcastle Law School. He has been joint Editor in Chief of the Environmental Law Review since its inception in 1999, and is General Editor of the Environment and Countryside Book Series. His principal research interests are the environmental regulation of agriculture, property rights, and land use. He is the editor of three volumes, and the author of one of the principal works in the UK on agricultural property law (Agricultural Law, 3rd ed. 2008). He was the Principal Investigator of a major research project Contested Common Land: environmental governance, law and sustainable land management c.1600-2006 (AHRC-funded 2007-2010. see http://commons.ncl.ac.uk): its outcomes were published as Contested Common Land, Environmental Governance past and present (Rodgers, Winchester, Straughton, & Pieraccini, 2010). He is currently Principal Investigator of another AHRC-funded project, Building Commons Knowledge 2012-13.