The new report is the first systematic assessment of whether Portugal should introduce a dedicated legal mechanism to secure long-term conservation commitments on private land; modelled on land conservation easements and on the easement-like conservation instruments now emerging across Europe.
Rewilding Portugal and The Lifescape Project are pleased to announce the completion and publication of a major report, Legal Mechanism for Conservation and Restoration in Europe: Examples and Lessons for Portugal. Commissioned by Rewilding Portugal and authored by Lifescape, the report addresses one of the most persistent obstacles to nature restoration in Portugal: the absence of a legal tool dedicated to conservation and its ancillary objectives, capable of securing long-term commitments on privately owned land, regardless of future changes in ownership.
Most ecologically valuable land in Portugal, as elsewhere in Europe, lies outside protected areas and in private hands, used for agriculture or forestry. Existing Portuguese legal tools — ownership, superficies rights, easements, usufruct, and leases — can each be voluntary, registrable, and in some cases perpetual, but none carries a recognised public-interest built-in conservation purpose. These are general-purpose instruments pressed into conservation service, not tools designed for it, and that might hinder the long-term pursuit of those objectives. Private protected areas do carry both the public-interest legitimacy and conservation purpose, but only for as long as public authorities continue to approve them. This dependence can hinder action beyond conservation, such as active rewilding, where this does not align with the authorities’ agenda. A dedicated instrument would complement these tools, private protected areas included, rather than replace them.
This matters more than ever now. Portugal’s first draft National Restoration Plan, required under the EU’s Nature Restoration Regulation, is due in September 2026, and the Court of Justice of the European Union recently imposed financial penalties on Portugal for shortfalls in implementing the Habitats Directive — both signalling mounting pressure to deliver measurable conservation outcomes on the ground.
Interest in these tools is already growing in practice. The Portuguese direito de superfície (superficies right) was used for what is believed to be the first time to secure land for long-term rewilding, through an earlier joint project between Rewilding Portugal and Lifescape. This report builds on that experience to ask a bigger question: should Portugal go further and create a purpose-built instrument of its own?
Drawing on Lifescape’s legal expertise, strength in comparative legal analysis, and the practical experience it has gained as a designated Responsible Body (under both the English conservation covenant regime and the Scottish conservation burden regime) the report combines three strands of analysis:
The report’s central finding is that Portugal should create a dedicated, conservation-specific, registrable legal instrument through a standalone special statute — rather than stretching an existing Civil Code category beyond its legal limits. Designed well, such a mechanism would let landowners and conservation organisations enter voluntary, durable agreements — of indefinite duration by default — that survive changes in ownership, without needing to be tied to a neighbouring “dominant” property. It would sit alongside, not replace, existing public-law protections, and it would be built to interact clearly with land registration, planning, forestry, hunting, and future conservation-incentive frameworks. Adopting such an instrument would also place Portugal at the forefront of private-land conservation in Europe, ahead of most mainland jurisdictions, which still lack a dedicated tool of this kind.
The report also sets out detailed, audience-specific recommendations for policymakers and legislators, for public authorities and land registry actors, and for rewilding and conservation organisations — including practical guidance on sequencing: establishing the legal instrument first and treating fiscal incentives and support schemes as a follow-up workstream rather than a precondition.
Rewilding Portugal and The Lifescape Project will use this report to inform ongoing advocacy for legal and policy reform in Portugal, including engagement with policymakers ahead of the September 2026 National Restoration Plan deadline. The two organisations see the report as a practical foundation — grounded in comparative legal experience and hands-on land stewardship — for closing a long-standing gap in Portugal’s conservation toolkit, and for giving landowners and conservation bodies the legal certainty they need to commit land to restoration for generations to come.
A detailed executive summary is available here. The complete report is available on request. Policymakers, public authorities, landowners, conservation and rewilding organisations, researchers, and journalists who would like the full text can contact Stephanie Smith (Managing Lawyer – Rewilding Law) at stephanie.smith@lifescapeproject.org and Catarina Prata (Senior Rewilding Lawyer) at catarina.prata@lifescapeproject.org.
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The Rewilding Law Hub is a legal resource centre for rewilders around the world
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