The FACE Biodiversity Manifesto reflects the rigourous and active commitment made by FACE, its Members and the 7 million European hunters they represent to ensure that hunting is sustainable and contributes positively to biodiversity conservation.

The FACE Biodiversity Manifesto aligns itself with the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2020, directly addressing four of its six targets feeding into the 2020 headline target.

The 34 action points address a host of EU biodiversity priority areas and promote cooperation with other sectors and stakeholders such as farmers, land and forest owners, conservation NGOs and public authorities.

In June the European Council endorsed the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2020, as presented by the Commission Communication in May and emphasised the need for further discussions at the Council meeting in December on the Strategies’ targets and actions.

In the meantime, the European Parliament will draft and adopt their Own-Initiative Report on the Strategy to put forward its own recommendations to the Commission.

As a result we as the hunting community recognise our role to encourage and work with our governments towards the general application of Article 6 and the specific application of Article 8, whilst recognising our role in monitoring the sustainability of our activities (Article 7).

The role of hunters in halting the loss of biodiversity may to some appear contradictory. This however is not the case for a number of reasons;

• Hunters are strongly interested in sustainability - it stands to reason that hunters have a very strong interest in ensuring that populations are sustainable in order to be able to hunt in the future.
• Hunting regulates biodiversity - in an environment increasingly affected by human activities and where habitats are managed for multiple purposes hunting has a strong role to play in regulating populations to ensure their health, stability and long term survival.
• Hunting creates value - globalisation whatever its impacts has resulted in a global society that increasingly recognises economic values in decision making processes. Hunting creates both direct and indirect value for and of species and their habitats that oblige decision makers to take them into account to the benefit of conservation.
• Hunting can serve to reduce conflict - stretching back in history hunters have often served to reduce conflict between man and animals. This has an important role to play in incorporating social dimensions into conservation activities.
• Identifying threats - hunters can act as an early warning system by monitoring local biodiversity health, for example in the control of alien invasive species