Although the first attempts to give legal response to the increasingly frequent attacks suffered by the environment is mainly focused on providing protection to its constituent elements (water, air and soil), the development of environmental legislation has led to the definition generic has been clarified and enriched in recent times. Beside the constituent elements of the environment are in the present, as an object of legal protection, other factors essential to the balance of nature, especially biological, which are the center of attention in the rules on protection of nature. These new policy instruments, approved both the supra-national framework (through treaties and Community law) and the state (through certain administrative laws or autonomous central character) have far exceeded the narrow perspective that initially partieran (protection only from certain animals against the exercise of certain activities) in favor of a more 'organic' approach and more comprehensive in the protection of fauna and flora; the International Convention on Biological Diversity, 1992, the Habitats Directive of the same year and the Law 4/1989, of 27 March, on the conservation of natural areas and wild fauna and flora, are clear examples of this evolution.