And now we know what the UK Government wants to achieve for wildlife. A clear set of measurable targets by which we can judge how well they are doing. Am very pleased.
I know, the money may not be in place yet, and there appears to be a general feeling that voluntary approaches will suffice, but these targets/measurable outcomes/impact measures - whatever you want to call them - do matter. These will tell us over time whether the Government is any good at saving nature.
From that White Paper...
"By 2020 we want to achieve an overall improvement in the status of our wildlife." OK that souds good, but what exactly do you mean?
"Over time, we plan to have 90% of priority wildlife habitats in recovering or favourable condition." Right, that includes all types of sites including local wildlife sites, so that sounds pretty good.
"We will work to achieve more, bigger, better and less-fragmented areas for wildlife, including no net loss of priority habitat and an increase of at least 200,000 ha in the overall extent of priority habitats." Did all government departments really agree to this expansion target - am impressed!
"At least 50% of SSSIs will be in favourable condition, while maintaining at least 95% in favourable or recovering condition." Hmm - a tiny improvement on the high point of 44.51% in favourable condition in November 2008, and maintenance of the original 95%. Here's hoping that they still want to get the other half of our finest wildlife sites into good condition.
"And, in line with commitments made at Nagoya, at least 17% of England will be managed effectively in order to safeguard biodiversity and ecosystem services." This is larger area than our current designated sites and reserves, plus local wildlife sites, but less than the area of our protected landscapes. As it’s for active management, it is quite ambitious (but then it is a Nagoya commitment).
"At least 15% of degraded ecosystems that are important for climate change mitigation and adaptation will be restored." This sounds as though it could be useful, but I've no idea how they plan to measure it.
And, as for saving species? Oh, nothing. Yet. Maybe in the England Biodiversity Strategy in a couple of weeks.
But the picture is emerging and this feels like an ambition worth fighting for.
Thanks, Graham. I think that is absolutely the right response. We're being encouraged to think creatively and that is what we will have to do. I am hopeful of more references to species conservation in the imminent England Biodiversity Strategy. As someone who used to type on these pages once said - you get a lot of ecosystem services from managing habitats. So, let's have a lot more habitat. But we need to keep an eye on species to keep us honest. You can keep forests in tact but if you've lost the tiger, you've lost something precious.
Sooty - I couldn't agree more about the need for decent advice. We do our bit. We have a network of farm advisors and we've invested £2.5m in our volunteer farmer alliance scheme where we have provided more than 5,000 farmers with free bird surveys on farmland over 350,000 hectares. In East Yorkshire alone we've helped farmers access £2.8m in grant schemes. The sad reality is that even if we increased our effort tenfold we'd still fail to reach a majority of farmers.