Habitats Directive
European Union directive on the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora
The Habitats Directive (more formally known as Council Directive 92/43/EEC on the Conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora) is a directive adopted by the European Community in 1992 as a response to the Berne Convention. The European Community was reformed as the European Union the following year, but the directive is still recognised.
The Habitats Directive required national governments to specify areas that are expected to be ensuring the conservation of flora and fauna species. This led to the setting up of a network of protected areas across the EU, along with 'Special Areas of Conservation', which together with the existing Special Protection Areas, became the so-called Natura 2000 network established to protect species and habitats.
This directive is one of the main pillars of the European Union's system of wildlife and nature conservation, another being the Birds Directive. The Habitats Directive, together with the Birds Directive, are also called the "nature directives".
The Habitats Directive consists of 24 articles of legislation to which all member states must comply. Article 17 of the directive sets the terms and standards for reporting on both the habitats and species listed in the annexes by the individual EU member countries. It stipulates a report from each member country on the state of nature every six years. The first preliminary reports were due in 2001 (but only published in 2004), the first actual assessments were due in 2007 (published 2009), the second in 2013 (published 2015), and the third set of assessment reports were due in 2019 (published 2020).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Habitats Directive” as european Union directive on the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as european Union directive on the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q759874. VIAF identifies the subject as 219193917. The Library of Congress control number is n2007004261. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992, 2000, 2001 and 2004.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Habitats Directive” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.