What are the forthcoming legislative issues of interest to ecologists and conservationists in 2017?
Abstract
This paper covers our seventh assessment of the forthcoming legislation that we consider to have likely consequences for the environment or for ecologists. We again review issues of a global scale, those in the European Union (EU), and those in the United Kingdom and constituent countries. We have often been told that this paper is useful for policy makers desiring a review of the issues on the horizon, as well as for researchers wishing to learn either how their results may be used or their work may be affected by changes in legislation. An overwhelming change on the horizon is the referendum decision of the UK to leave the EU, which was discussed speculatively in the last scan. This has enormous consequences, however, further speculation at this stage would be premature given there are so many uncertainties over the nature of negotiations. The election of Donald Trump as President of the USA is, at the time of writing in early February, showing signs of having global ramifications for the environment and science. The legislative scans of previous years (Sutherland 2011-16) are freely available on the British Ecological Society website. Issues described in those scans are not repeated here.