Governments often find the environment difficult to deal with. In today's Independent Environment editor Mike McCarthy has a real go at the government and at Defra.
McCarthy says that based on what the government is actually doing, its aspiration to be the greenest government ever is risible.
He uses the sell-off of forests, proposed disposal of NNRs and the failure to do anything about some pesticides as examples. He could also have brought into play the proposals to bump off our badgers.
Whereas floods, avian flu and foot and mouth disease can be regarded as events that government has to deal with, the Big Society aim of shifting forests and NNRs and letting farmers get together to kill badgers are government decisions. No-one forced them to go this way - it was a choice. And these are choices that, without a rethink, may come together over the next few weeks to create a storm of protest over environmental issues.
Government has time to rethink over forests - that's what a consultation period allows - and we hope that they will moderate their proposals. The RSPB does not think that all current FC forests need to be retained in state ownership but it is the commercial ones which might go (with the right safeguards) and the heritage forests which might stay. We will study the consultation in detail and make our views known on our website within two weeks - and then we'll be asking our members to make their views known too. I feel sure that RSPB members will want to respond to the consultation.
And there isn't much money to be saved out of selling NNRs, or perhap even long term leases, so that idea doesn't have many legs either. There may be some scope for Defra to involve organisations like the RSPB (but there are lots of others) in managing England's finest nature sites - that's something we can talk about although it's not our idea and we aren't pushing it.
Badgers - let's see how Defra gets on with forests and NNRs first.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Mark, your thoughts on the state forests seem spot on.
It seems mad for the government to mess around with the NNRs. There are a few bits here and there (and perhaps some bigger areas) that would be more logically combined with RSPB or Trust reserves. Otherwise very little point to it. The government doesn't seem to like the state owning things. Why are the NNRs any different from the contents of the national museums and galleries?