With all the hullabaloo over planning reforms in Northern Ireland, the anticipation over Defra's biodiversity offsetting announcement, and the England cricket team's heroics at Trent Bridge, I neglected to report on some good news.
Monday's guest blogger, George Monbiot may not be a fan of farm subsidies, but I hope that even he would be pleased to know that last week the Secretary of State, Owen Paterson, confirmed his commitment to funding for wildlife friendly farming in England. He said in the House of Commons that he would make use of the full flexibility allowed by the CAP and EU Budget deals to move 15% of CAP funding in Pillar 1 (the direct payments to farmers) into the next England Rural Development Programme, made up largely of agri-environment schemes.
This is good news for the natural environment and for those farmers that want to help recover the c60% of farmland species which have declined in recent decades. This is the benchmark against which Mr Paterson's counterparts in the devolved administrations should be judged.
The CAP reform deal fell a long way short of our aspirations for a Sustainable Land Management Policy but we now need to make the best of what we have. That means working with Defra and Natural England to help design agri-environment schemes to deliver as much for the environment as the funding allows and then supporting farmers put the right management in place.
And this makes me reflect on what George was saying in his blog this week. He wants us, and other conservation organisations, to go further and fast to remove human intervention from landscapes. I admire this aspiration - I know that I am not alone in finding wild landscapes and big predators awe inspiring. But it just isn't always possible or perhaps desirable in a highly fragmented and managed landscape like ours where there are so many demands from the land.
Our brilliant site managers have responsibility for looking after over 200 nature reserves and 150,000 hectares across the UK. They face constant choices, balancing objectives for the 15,000 species on our land as well as the needs and values of our neighbours and visitors. Whether they are restoring climax communities, such as at Abernethy and Mawddach Valley, managing semi-natural habitats like heathland and grasslands or creating new habitats at places like Lakenheath or Wallasea, I think our site managers do a remarkable job and our wildlife benefits as a result. It's worth noting that even in very big National Parks like Yellowstone, which is about half the size of Wales, there is still a fair amount of habitat management, including burning, but I'd hope that George celebrates what they have been able to do including, for example, reintroducing wolf.
And, as I have written previously, we do have to take some tough choices when trying to protect threatened species often struggling to survive on tiny postage stamps of land. Sometimes this may even mean trying to protect every individual. Crisis conservation sometimes demands intensive intervention and sadly this is what we face in parts of the country. So, yes, in extreme circumstances, we may try to find ways to minimise predation of lapwing chicks from buzzards by removing potential nesting habitat outside of the nesting season while enabling the buzzards to look for suitable habitat elsewhere. But to be clear, this certainly does NOT mean killing buzzards, or destroying active nests. We take action while still wanting to address the ultimate causes of species decline and investigating why predation is a problem. Our ambition is always to recover populations to such a level so that predation is no longer a problem.
I'd go further, our ambition is to go as wild as we can, working out what we can realistically do help restore natural processes for wildlife and, yes, for people as well. I hope that you, perhaps even George, would share this aspiration.
Thanks for the clarification Martin, sounds like like someone has been taking a leaf out of your book in NE Scotland with Ernes http://tinyurl.com/o6dpd3s
KC – Thanks for your questions. This absolutely does not involve translocation of adult of juvenile buzzards. It involves managing the habitat in such a way as to make it less attractive. At its simplest, it could be cutting down a favourite tree during the winter, to increase the chances of the pair settling somewhere else to breed the next year. Buzzards are quite philopatric, but if an area has changed to make it less favourable, they will look for alternative nest site.
Hopefully I can provide some clarity around what funding transfers from Pillar I (direct payments) to rural development will mean financially.
Between 2014-2020, the UK is going to receive almost £20bn from the CAP - big sums indeed. But these are very unequally split, with 90% of the funds going to Pillar I, leaving rural development massively underfunded. In fact, compared the UK's current (2007-2013) allocation, we're facing a cut to rural development funds of over 20%.
Attempting to address this startling imbalance by transferring money from Pillar I to rural development appears therefore to be the only logical response. And it’s not like we haven’t got used to such transfers – in the current CAP we’re already transferring 19% in England.
It’s also important to remember that many agri-environment agreements will run into the new CAP period and will need to be paid for from its budget. Existing commitments in England will require some £1.8bn from the new allocation but when you consider that the UK’s entire rural development allocation (which covers England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland) is just £1.84bn it becomes very clear that modulation is not just logical, it’s a financial necessity.
It’s impossible to say exactly what a 15% transfer will mean for the English rural development budget because the decision on how to divide the £1.84bn has not yet been thrashed out by agriculture ministers across the UK. But given we’re playing with a much smaller UK pot of rural development money, and we can only transfer 15% into to it from Pillar I (not more, like we can currently), we’re likely to face a real terms cut to the amount of money made available for environmental schemes.
All this makes it even more important to spend this money well and on schemes that reward farmers who really deliver for wildlife on their farms. It also means we’re going to have to be smarter about what requirements are attached to Pillar I payments, such as cross compliance and the new ‘greening’ requirements many farmers will have to meet. Even with a 15% transfer, Pillar I will still represent, and by some way, the biggest source of funding for farming and in tough economic times, this money has to work harder – for taxpayers, for the environment and for the farming and rural community which depends on a healthy environment for food production, tourism and much more.
Of course to take the perfectly logical view as opposed to a middle of the road view that G M is happy to take to be controversial and get money from ridiculous articles that are never going to happen.
Facts are that no one seems to understand that although farmers have destroyed a small amount of hedgerows they are the ones who created every one of our hedges in the first place.
A alternative view to G Ms view is that this island was originally completely forested so lets get back there as quickly as we can,starting in his back garden.
This does seem unexpectedly good news - my calculation is 15% could be c £500m per annum - is that about right ? It is a lot. It is doubly good news because it backs the farmers who have committed through HLS to manage their land for the environment - a commitment that can leave them exposed to sudden reductions in Government funding.
On George's thoughts & your response, I'd suggest you don't have to go with them - but equally surely we should be discussing ideas like this openly ? I sense some defensiveness - and in other discussions of big land use have started to pick up a 'we're quite happy in our hole, we know its not a very good hole, but its familiar and we like it here' - and I don't think its good enough. There are many shades of management - in the case of woodland, for example, it is a history of interaction between the natural and human that has created a unique and special environment in our lowland ancient woods (in contrast to Native Pinewoods which were raped for money like destroyed rainforest). George Peterken has clearly shown, as only George can, that simply doing nothing doesn't return you to a 'natural' woodland. In our work in the Forestry Commission we never claimed to be going back to something that was exactly the same as what was there before - but rather to be creating future landscapes within quite clearly defined paramaters.