58Moreover, as the Advocate General observed, in essence, in points 79 to 82 of his Opinion, when assessing the grant of a derogation based on Article 16(1), it is for the competent national authority to determine, in particular at national level or, where applicable, at the level of the biogeographical region in question where the borders of that Member State straddle several biogeographical regions or if the natural range of the species so requires and, to the extent possible, at a cross-border level, as a first step, the conservation status of the populations of the species in question and, in a second step, the geographical and demographic effects that the envisaged derogations are capable of having on those.
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