I wrote a paper last year entitled, "A Summary of Legislation and Organizations Involved in the Preservation of Caves and Bats", which was published on the NSS Conservation and Management Website (www.caves.org/section/ccms). This site has been recently updated to include the proposed Maine Cave Protection Act.
In the international arena, I have located what I consider the ultimate single gateway accessing national and international environmental law. ECOLEX (www.ecolex.org), or the International Union of Conservation Council's Environmental Law Information System (ELIS), is linked to the United Nations Environmental Programme's Computerized Environmental Law Information Base (CELIB).
On this site you are able to search over 19,000 informational sources on National Legislation, and 34,000 documents on laws and policy literature, using subject area, keyword, country (jurisdiction) and/or date. The list of subjects includes information on multilateral treaties, national legislation, European Union instruments, international "soft law" and related declarations and resolutions, law and policy literature and judicial decisions. These cover legislation from 480 countries and territories around the world; and, in the case of decentralized States, legal instruments from state or regional levels. Cross-references to related legislation and conventions are also indexed. In some cases the entire text can be reviewed, in others the reference is listed.
Below are some of the subjects and number of references to each in the record database, which can be sorted by date, jurisdiction and judicial field of application.
National Laws and
Legislation Policy
Climate 157 1227
Fauna 1656 2126
Subset - Animal protection and management 1505 1803
Flora 754 1268
Subset - Plant species and management 628 1079
Land Use Planning 525 3655
Non-renewable resources 99 1066
Protected Areas 3018 1820
Water 2867 3115
Environmental Conservation 1695 13697
Natural Resources and Nature Conservation 806 3785
The fauna database contains approximately 14,100 records, the flora approximately 6,200. I search Bats/Flying Foxes and found 37 different treaties and national legislation references, which referenced 11 families and 90 species of bats.
If you are interested in researching the environmental law for a specific karst, cave area or bat to see if they are protected, I recommend you visit www.ecolex.org. You will not be disappointed.
Footnote: Another very good source for Environmental Law is the Pace Virtual Environmental Law Library at http://www.law.pace.edu/env/vell6.html.
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