#DefendNature

Across Europe, including here in the UK, crucial nature laws protect our most precious wildlife. Together these ‘Nature Directives’ protect a network of wild places stretching across Europe. For over 30 years they have protected some of our best loved and most iconic landscapes. Some 800 of the UK’s special habitats – like the ancient woodland and heathland in the New Forest, the migratory birds in the Solent and Southampton Water and the iconic chalkstream habitats of the River Itchen – benefit from the protections they offer.

At Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, we’ve found that these nature laws are essential in for example, stopping damaging developments like the proposals to build a new container port at Dibden Bay near Southampton, which threatened breeding habitat for coastal birds, and in protecting species from near-extinction like the otter.

It’s not just wildlife that depends on this legislation – we do too, for cleaner rivers and seas, for the vital habitats that support pollinating insects and for the natural places we can enjoy and spend time in. Without these laws our world would be a much poorer place.

Right now European Leaders are reviewing the Directives and asking people to give their opinion on them. There is concern among many charities that the review could be hijacked and protection for nature could be weakened under the guise of helping economic growth.

However a strong natural environment is the foundation for a functioning economy. It’s estimated that the network of wild areas these laws protect creates some €200-300bn worth of economic benefits per year to local economies. What’s more, undermining the protections for nature will just create more uncertainty over things like investment and development.

Moreover, the laws protect wildlife while encouraging ways of people and nature to live together in and around some of our most iconic landscapes. They’re good for wildlife, people and the economy.

Some two thirds of the UK’s species have declined over the last half century from loss of habitat already – and now climate change is threatening the survival of those that are left. So it’s vital that as many of us as possible say that we feel strongly about this and don’t want to see these laws weakened.

The Wildlife Trusts have joined 100 other charities and environmental organisations across the UK to help people respond to the consultation in support of the Nature Directives. This is to help send a clear and consistent message to the European Commission that people feel strongly about this, wherever they live. 

We can’t let them roll back years of progress – to let them know your views visit: www.wildlifetrusts.org/defendnature before 24th July. 

Please share this campaign with your friends and family. Use #defendnature, #naturealert and our campaign link: http://wtru.st/defendnature

> Read our ‘It’s Our Nature: You can help protect Europe’s laws for wildlife‘ report to find out more.

> Read our blog – Joan Edwards looks at what the Nature Directives do for people and wildlife here in the UK.

> Read the joint media release

> Read more background on the consultation from the European Commisson

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Rubbish benefits for wildlife and communities

The Government is looking at reforming the ‘Landfill Communities Fund’, a national grant pot for community and wildlife projects.

The funding comes from ‘green tax’ on rubbish sent to be buried in landfill sites. In principle the landfill tax is a good thing, as it encourages recycling and reduces our contribution to climate change and it’s potentially catastrophic impacts on wildlife.

But the added bonus is that the money is redistributed to local environmental projects, including in many Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

Over the last 2 years alone, over £105,000 from the Landfill Communities Fund has supported a range of wildlife projects we at Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust are involved in.

This includes a 2 year restoration programme at Sandown Meadows Nature Reserve on the Isle of Wight. Owned and managed by HIWWT, this site, and others in the valley are being restored with a £50,000 grant from the Local Communities Fund via Biffa.

Riverside trees have been coppiced to encourage lush growth of bankside vegetation that will benefit a range of species including water voles, dragonflies and kingfishers. Over the past year volunteers have put in a tremendous amount of time and effort helping to restore an old floodplain pond that is now attracting a range of wildfowl like shoveler, snipe and mallard. Thanks to the funding, we were also able to remove the non-native invasive Parrot’s Feather plant from the ditches.

Given the Fund’s huge importance to community environmental projects such as the one at Sandown, it’s hardly surprising that many organisations like the Wildlife Trusts are very concerned about current government plans to ‘reform’ it.

There are growing fears that vital funding for these community projects will be reduced or removed under the guise of the Fund being ‘inefficient’. While the process could be better at getting more money to more community projects more efficiently, getting rid of it altogether shouldn’t be on the table.

Any reduction in this already over-subscribed fund will hit community environmental projects hard. Currently everything from footpaths in nature reserves through to new inner-city playgrounds are only being delivered because of this fund. And potential cuts to the Fund are even more concerning at a time when government spending on wildlife-rich green spaces is expected to fall across the board over the coming years.

We’re also concerned about government proposals to only fund short term projects. We know that what wildlife really needs right now is long term investment and protection. Planning for the future is the only way we’ll put nature on the path to recovery.

That’s why we at Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust are responding to the government consultation on the Landfill Communities Fund, calling on them to keep this lifeline for community environmental projects.

**If you would like to respond to the consultation, you can read more on the government website, and email your views to Landfill-tax.consultation@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk by 10 June 2015**

Finally, my blog will shortly be moving to a new home to on Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust’s website.

So for my latest views on working in nature conservation in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and wider conservation issues in the UK, subscribe to my new blog here.

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Thanks Hugh!

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of meeting Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall at the River Cottage Autumn Fair.

Hugh is a real advocate for sustainability (just look at some of the great things he’s doing at River Cottage HQ) and of course is famous as being the mastermind behind Hugh’s Fish Fight.  So I wanted the chance to chat to him about the Wildlife Trusts’ marine work and in particular our concerns about Marine Conservation Zones.

Hugh agreed to support our campaign for 127 MCZs as you can see from the photo!  Thanks Hugh – we really appreciate it.

To find out more about our MCZs campaign follow the link here.  You can help too by signing up to be a Friend of your local MCZ here.

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Reasons to be cheerful?

Most nature conservationists are feeling really depressed right now.  November was a month of doom and gloom.  Mark Avery and Miles King sum things up very well in their blogs, as does Tony Whitbread.  The recent actions of this Government in their desperate bid for growth – from distorting the meaning of sustainable development in planning to the weakening of the habitats regulations – amount to the worst assault on wildlife I have experienced in my 20 years in nature conservation.

What to do?  NGOs must stand firm and stand together – it feels as if we are the “last man standing”.  With the statutory nature conservation bodies emasculated and local authorities paralysed through budget cuts, there is nobody else but the voluntary sector and the Great British Public to stand up for nature.

Let’s not get too downhearted.  People care about nature and their local environment – and this interest is not dampened by the poor state of the economy.  Far from it.  The main nature conservation bodies are seeing their memberships continue to rise.  In the last twelve months the Wildlife Trusts have grown their membership income by an impressive 8.7%.  That’s what I call growth!

Wild Safari Playdays

Locally, Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust has had one of its best years ever.  Not only did we celebrate our 50th anniversary, our membership grew steadily, we had more children and young people involved in nature activities than ever,  and we had a fantastic year in terms of achievements, for example: 

We doubled our land holding on the Isle of Wight, thanks to generous legacies, donations and support from businesses. 

In Hampshire, we won the prestigious Orvis Wild Trout Trust conservation awards for a major river restoration project on the River Itchen at Winnall Moors. 

We were awarded the Learning outside the Classroom Quality Badge for our environmental education work and record numbers of children took part in Forest School activities and attended our Centres.

Dexters at Noar Hill

Working in partnership with Hampshire Fare we had great support for our new economic venture – selling beef from our Dexter Cattle that graze our nature reserve at Noar Hill in Selborne.

These are just a few of my reasons to be cheerful.  We won’t let Osborne’s crusade to wreck the environment dampen our spirits.  We will fight them and we will show him that the people of Hampshire and the Island care about their natural environment. 

We’ll be working with the other Wildlife Trusts and other NGOs on the Defra review of the Habitats Regulations to ensure that the vital protection for our most precious wildlife sites is not weakened.

If you care, please join us and also why not write to your MP to tell them how important nature is to you.

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Marine Conservation Zones at risk

The marine habitats and wildlife off our shores are facing a serious threat, with the long-awaited network of marine protected areas, promised by Government for 2012, being in danger of failing before it has even got off the ground.

After years of pressure from NGOs, and with huge public support, the Marine and Coastal Access Act of 2009 promised a coherent network of protected areas – desparately needed to help our seas recover from years of neglect – around the coasts by 2012.  Now 127 marine sites around England’s coast, including 30 in South East England and 7 around Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, have been recommended by sea users and stakeholders to become Marine Conservation Zones next year.

The recommendations are the result of two years of consultation, costing millions of pounds, with more than one million stakeholders involved including fishermen, conservationists and businesses. This has been the first ‘Big Society’ experiment where local stakeholders have decided together which areas of the sea should be protected, but will the Government listen to its own Big Society or retreat from its localism agenda and centralise decision making? 

There is serious concern that Government’s Statutory Nature Conservation Bodies (Natural England and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee) will recommend to Government that only a fraction of the 127 recommended sites are designated. This could result in just a handful of scattered sites that would not fulfill the Government’s own guidance, which the stakeholders have worked so hard to adhere to, and leave vulnerable and precious areas unprotected.

Jolyon Chesworth, Marine Conservation Manager at Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, says:  

“A huge amount of work has been done to get a broad agreement on this network of sites needed for the health and future productivity of our marine environment.  Now, however, in the final stages the Government has lost its direction and is proposing to over-ride the recommendations of local stakeholders and cut the 127 sites down to an unrealistic 30, in contradiction with the aims of the Marine and Coastal Access Act and the thousands of pages of its own guidance.”

Referring to what this may mean for our local seas, Jolyon continues, “Sea Users have worked tirelessly in the South East and around the Solent to understand the complex process and guidance required by the Government to come up with recommended Marine Conservation Zones that meet the criteria. The work has resulted in a very positive set of 30 recommended sites which have a lot of broad support. Seven of these sites are around Hants and Wight, including Bembridge, which has more examples of species and habitats than any other site in the South East, including rare seaweeds, spoonworms and seahorses, Utopia, home to sponge and coral gardens and northern areas of the Isle of Wight coast, home to the best examples of seagrass in the region. 

To suggest that only 7 of the 30 sites in the South East may actually go ahead makes a mockery of the hard work of the local sea users, contradicts the official guidance and most importantly will not adequately protect the habitats and species that exist here.

With Wildlife Trusts all around the UK, we are lobbying hard for the successful completion of a process that will make a real difference to the conservation of our seas. We need to demonstrate the weight of public support for Marine Conservation Zones to Government. This is a once in a lifetime chance.  We can’t afford to let it slip away.” 

Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust is urging people to write to Richard Benyon and ask for Government to create the proposed network of 127 MCZs in England. It has produced some guidance on writing to the Minister, which can be found at www.wildlifetrusts.org/saveourmczs

Please sign our petition http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/petitionfish

Write to your MP and the Minister http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/saveourmczs

What is your favourite nature moment?

Join in our discussion to help show the government that nature is important and needs better protection…

Orange tip butterfly on cuckooflower by Ian Ralphs

Tell us what you love about nature, what your best wildlife encounter was, why nature is important to you… Get involved in the discussions by adding your comments below… Be inspired by what other people are saying…

Then – if you feel strongly about this – please tell the government too.  We want as many people as possible to fill in defra’s questionnaire [only 4 questions] to tell the government their views on the natural environment – and that we want better protection for wildlife and restoration of damaged ecosystems through the White Paper.

A white paper for the natural environment

It may sound rather dry, but the government’s commitment to produce a Natural Environment White Paper is possibly the most important development for nature conservation for a generation.

The Wildlife Trusts have been campaigning for several years for better protection for wildlife and, more importantly, a mechanism to help us restore ecosystems and habitats to reverse the huge declines in biodiversity.  The white paper could help us achieve our goal – but we all need to engage.

It is crucial that as many people as possible tell the government how important the natural environment is, and why it is urgent that we do a lot more to protect it.  Take part by answering these 4 questions and let the government know how you feel.  What is it about nature that matters to you?  How does it benefit your life?  What should be done to protect nature?  How could you get involved?

Take part in our online discussion with other Trust members and help create a wave of interest in the white paper – we could be the generation that stops the decline in biodiversity and sees ecosystems restored for the future!