For once I’m not thinking about cricket (well I am a bit because there is a test match on). We have the Ashes safely in our possession, thank you very much - so I can afford to think of other things.
I’m talking biodiversity strategies. Even more exciting than a five match test series? Certainly of great importance to our future well being and that of the planet.
So, as we eagerly anticipate the launch of the England Biodiversity Strategy (due out the end of this month) it is interesting to look at what the Australian government have already included in theirs.
The Aussies, keen to get early runs on the board, produced their strategy back in 2010, whilst the rest of the world was still debating the global plan for biodiversity in Nagoya. Refreshing to see that this plain speaking nation was prepared to set some clear targets and not afraid to call them targets either. They identified 10 measurable targets for 2015 from public participation to monitoring.
The scale of their country and its biodiversity is impressive but so is their ambition. They aim to increase the area of natural habitat managed primarily for nature conservation by 600,000 km2 by 2015. (Yes, that is 60 million hectares!). We don’t have that much natural habitat left, let alone a commitment to manage what we have ‘primarily for biodiversity conservation’.
OK, ok they have a huge country, a fraction of our population density so it is easy for them, yes. But that just makes their target to establish and manage four collaborative continental-scale linkages to improve natural connections even more impressive.
Now you may not believe this but, I’m bit of a competitive chap and I don’t want to see our Government out played by their antipodean counterparts. I’ve already commented previously on this blog that the white paper includes some good stuff on increasing the extent of priority habitats and getting wildlife sites into management. But where are the areas that we should be able to outscore the Aussies?
I think there are three:
1. An effective deliver plan for globally threatened species on UK overseas territories (but that’s a UK issue, not to be covered by the EBS, I will come back to this at a later date).
2. A state of nation report setting clear baselines for biodiversity (priority species, habitats and sites), where were we in 2000, 2005 and in 2010. We pride ourselves on knowing a lot about this pink (or green?) bit of the map. Let’s set it all down in one clear assessment including where the gaps are.
3. A clear programme addressing the specific needs of threatened species in England.
The White Paper promised a strong implementation of the Nagoya commitments and leading by example at home. One of those commitments was about improving the fortunes of those threatened species that were most in decline. Back in 2007, hundreds of experts on biodiversity (the Big Society in action?) helped the Government carry out a detailed review of species and habitats. This listed an alarming 304 species in England that had declined by over 50% in the last 25 years. Sadly, there will be more species that could be added to this list since 2007.
Will the EBS deliver or will we fall behind Australia? We will have to wait until the end of the month to find out.
Sooty - you're right, we can occasionally get a little fixated on one group of species. At the RSPB we have sepcies recovery groups focsuing on eight broad habitat types including seabirds, urban and heathland species. We're interested in the lot! Will try to talk more about these groups in the future...
Here at home, the sun is out at last and wildlife has come back to life...
Great article. The aus targets are mighty impressive. They do have the potential of pushing other countries such as ours to follow suit. Only time will tell!
Hi Martin as a retired farmer perhaps I take more notice of farmers being criticised for farmland birds in decline but maybe too much importance being placed on this one aspect as in the blog you say 304 species had declined by more than 50% in last 25 years and you now expect even more.
Even farmers worst enemies would not accuse farmers of being guilty for all of that,there just has to be lots of factors that farming is only a small part of and no more at fault than other factors.At least some farmers are trying to correct the declines but I do not see serious efforts on other things and in fact perhaps Wind Turbines making things worse.
I am not suggesting we should not try and improve things on farms but we need to identify the big problems for over 300 species and go from there.