Many organisations, and thus many funding streams, are involved in species protection policy. The Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality provides funding for species protection activities to conservation management organisations, private species protection organisations, the provincial authorities and others. In addition, the provinces have their own budgets for species protection. Private-sector species protection organisations obtain additional funds from legacies, sponsors and other sources.

From species to habitats
 

Species protection plans have been drawn up by central government since the end of the 1980s. One of the first of these plans to be produced was the Butterfly Protection Plan. Monitoring data from Dutch Butterfly Conservation show that, despite the plan, most butterfly species are in decline. Of the fifteen species covered by the plan, the populations of three are stable but the rest are shrinking or have even disappeared altogether. Most of these species are only found in a few small nature reserves. These are isolated from each other, which makes the populations even more vulnerable to external influences.

Besides specific funds for species protection, management subsidies are available for measures aimed at protecting endangered species. For example, government subsidies are available for meadow bird management. However, the policy for meadow birds is constrained by the fact that management measures achieve little as long as they are not supported by an improvement in land use and hydrological conditions. This requires an approach geared more to sustaining the habitats required by meadow birds than to the protection of individual species.

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