Protected areas: our “jewels in the crown”
Neither our countryside nor our seas are uniform. Some areas are better for wildlife than others. For conservation, it is important that these ‘hotspots’ are given more attention than the rest. This does not demean the ‘wider countryside’ – we will never secure our wildlife for future generations in protected areas alone,which is why the RSPB is championing landscape scale conservation through our Futurescapes programme. Nevertheless, protected areas have been the cornerstone of conservation policy and legislation since before the Second World War. This has, of course, developed over time – but, currently in Scotland, the main building blocks are the EU’s two conservation directives, one for birds and one for habitats and other wildlife, and the 2004 Nature Conservation Act. As you would expect some wonderful areas are protected in this way, such as the Flow Country or the oak woodland at the Wood of Cree.
Forsinard Flows. Photo: Eleanor Bentall
Wood of Cree. Photo: Andy Hay
About 12% of Scotland, give or take, is included in the so-called Natura 2000 network of sites protected by the EU directives. That sounds pretty impressive – but, compared to many other EU member states, we are hardly out of the blocks. Look at the ‘Natura barometer’ and you can see many countries have a much bigger commitment. The figures are presented at a member state level of course – so the EU lists the percentage for the whole of the UK rather than Scotland.
When challenged about why the UK overall doesn’t protect a bigger percentage area, its common to hear the retort “well, we look after these areas properly....”, with the unspoken implication that others don’t. But that line doesn’t always hold water.
One of the most effective ways to secure the required management of such sites is to support the farmers and crofters responsible for that management through schemes such as agri-environment – for example, the “Rural Priorities” scheme in Scotland. These schemes are part of the pillar 2 of the Common Agricultural Policy and are paid to farmers to positively help wildlife. But, if we look at the money spent on supporting wildlife management through these schemes, then the UK doesn’t look so great and Scotland is the worst of all (see graph below*).That means our schemes aren’t very generous, and are harder to get into in contrast to the rest of the UK.
Some of the reason for this poor level of support is historic - how the funding share was calculated by Brussels and Westminster –but it also reflects the priority afforded to conservation – and Scotland was a late adopter. Our failure to climb the league table and invest in these schemes is now down to decisions made at Holyrood. The Scottish Government has cut the funding.
Perhaps the most important thing is to look at what’s actually happening to the sites. Is all well? Are they flourishing? Well, I’m afraid, it doesn’t appear so. SNH report that only 73-75% of the habitat or species features for which protected areas are selected are in favourable condition and the situation is not improving, and the indicator in the Government’s National Performance Framework is not moving in the right direction. Recently, Labour’s Shadow Environment Spokesperson, Claudia Beamish MSP, asked some Parliamentary Questions about all this. The answers confirmed the depressing picture of the number of features in unfavourable condition. This means wildlife is under threat.
The reported state of affairs worries me a lot, In essence it’s easy to stop bad things happening to special sites such as ploughing them up, or draining wetlands. But a whole lot harder to get the grazing right, or prevent agricultural run off, manage disturbance or restore woodland management. I am rather proud that the features on RSPB Scotland sites are doing very much better – 95% are in favourable or favourable recovering condition (of those we can control of course). What we need now is better advice and well targeted funding to help farmers, crofters and land managers address the declining state of our protected sites. If I was Environment Minister Stewart Stevenson I think this would be one of my top priorities. So would launching a Scottish equivalent of England’s Nature Improvement Areas.
*Graph compiled from European Commission figures on EAFRD funding per MS (RDPs 2007-2013), Scottish Government figures on division of EAFRD funding between UK Countries (RDPs 2007-2013) and UAA figures from Eurostats (2005).