Give the best summary of the second paragraph.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

The wilderness is returning to Europe, but not without a little human help. Conservationists have spent years guarding eggs, counting stocks and reintroducing young animals into their natural habitat. But European wildlife also depends on a strong political framework, such as the hunting bans, protected sites and resettlement projects introduced by individual nations, which inspired the European Union to pass bold laws. This began with the Birds Directive, passed in 1979 which, in a single stroke, banned the hunting of virtually all European birds. In addition, EU member states were required to designate Special Protection Areas for 160 particularly vulnerable species—a measure that is largely responsible for the increase in populations of the White-tailed eagle, Marsh Harrier and Black stork, as studies carried out by Birdlife International have shown.
Thanks to EU laws, the air became cleaner, lakes and rivers recovered, and the use of chemicals in agriculture and industry declined during the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, stocks of fish have increased and birds of prey have been breeding more successfully. The greatest legislative coup took place in 1992 with the Habitats Directive. This requires member states to set up Special Areas of Conservation for endangered flora and fauna, including animals and such as the beaver, European otter, Eurasian lynx and Grey wolf. If existing reserves met the required criteria, they could be re-designated, but most countries have had to place additional areas under protection.
The Directive has placed 234 vulnerable species of plants and animals under protection, including all big carnivores, as well as bison, Alpine ibex and beaver. It has also compelled governments to relook at industrial parks and highways—as was the case in Poland in 2008, when a proposed new road was relocated so that it did not cut across the protected Rospuda Valley—and prompted them to introduce bans on hunting. Any new EU member is required to implement far more stringent laws on nature conservation: laws that are often fought out in court. One in four cases before the European Court of Justice involving one of its member states involves a breach of EU environmental law.
In some countries this breach is due to a lack of ability. ‘In Eastern Europe, governments at times have too little money or too few resources to meet their EU obligations’, says Professor Christoph Knill, environmental policy researcher at Konstanz University, Germany. In other cases, it is the lack of political will: Germany, for instance, designated its last Special Area of Conservation only in 2008, after a delay of 10 years and after the EU Commission threatened to drag it to court. By now, however, all states have set up their Special Protection Areas and Special Areas of Conservation: 26,000 sanctuaries in all, that together make up the Natura 2000 network and cover 18 per cent of the EU landmass. It is the world’s largest group of biotopes and a showpiece of the EU environmental policy, no matter what the critics say. (The Laws of the Wild West by Torsten Schafer)