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 issue of biodiversity decline and the resulting deterioration of ecosystem services is becoming of increasing concern to conservationists and citizens. The fact that biodiversity and ecosystem health is strongly coupled to climate change serves to make the issue more pressing. FACE supports the target of halting biodiversity loss by 2010 not only as members of IUCN but also as concerned hunters and conservationists.

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

To this end the European Hunting Community and FACE has been actively involved in a wide range of initiatives that aim to further encourage the involvement of hunters in broader conservation initiatives and to provide the tools to do so. These include;