Western Isles Biodiversity

Biodiversity Duty

In 2004 the Scottish Parliament passed a new law, the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004.  The Act has created a duty on public bodies “in exercising any functions, to further the conservation of biodiversity as far as is consistent with the proper exercise of those functions.”

The Comhairle’s Management Team has registered the importance of the biodiversity duty, agreed to deal with this duty corporately and supported the process of integrating biodiversity management corporately within existing Comhairle plans, strategies and initiatives and it was agreed that this could be done through the Comhairle’s internal Quality of Life Group.

The Scottish Executive, in association with SNH and CoSLA, has developed web based guidance on the delivering the Biodiversity Duty which can be viewed on the Biodiversity Scotland website.  

The guidance provides advice to local authorities and other public bodies on the best way of embedding biodiversity conservation within mainstream policy and service delivery. 

The guidance sets out in simple and straight forward ways the steps that councils and other public bodies could take to comply with the new biodiversity duty.  The Comhairle has agreed to follow the 4 step process set out in the Scottish Executive guidance.