Share

#DefendNature: The UK Government's attack on nature and what you can do to help

Stephen Moss, president of Somerset Wildlife Trust, urges more people to get involved in the #DefendNature campaign to help protect our wildlife and wild places.

It’s feeling like an uphill struggle to feel positive right now, especially as we head into the colder, darker months.

We’ve gone from a global pandemic to a war with Russia, massive economic downturn, rising inflation, a cost of living crisis, a new Prime Minister, a new King, and an unexpected mini-budget in what feels like a matter of months. World logic seems to have flown out of the window, and a couple of weeks ago, I was left wondering what catastrophe was next on the cards. Turns out I didn’t have to wait that long…

After years of work and collective lobbying effort from the environmental sector, we finally had a government that was showing positive ambition to meet climate targets and, having at last acknowledged that economic prosperity was inexorably linked to a healthy natural environment, had (finally) put into law an Environment Act that was more focused on protecting and restoring nature and biodiversity. We were also on the brink of introducing new agricultural schemes to reward landowners for doing just that.

But, in what felt like a matter of minutes under a new Prime Minister, the Government that was elected in 2019 on a manifesto promise to deliver the most ambitious environmental programme of any country on earth, with a target of Net Zero by 2030, had effected a full and complete U-turn on that promise.

Image with text: more sewage, more chemicals + less wildlife, less wellbeing

Longstanding vital laws that protect our wildlife and habitats were thrown out on the grounds they were ‘burdens’ to economic growth and a threat to food security, developers essentially got the green light to concrete over green spaces and trash wildlife sites in favour of ‘investment zones’, polluters were given a ‘get out of jail free’ card to dump more sewage in our rivers, and it looked like we were going to give taxpayers’ money to landowners for simply just owning more land, not how they manage it. Oh yes, and guess what… fracking’s back.

As a movement, as a local Trust, as individuals and for me personally too… we’re all still reeling from the sheer pace and scale of the #AttackOnNature that has occurred over the past two weeks - it can be seen as nothing else. At times it’s simply overwhelming. And if it is for us, I expect that it is for many of you too.

You might, however, also have seen in the press that we, the Wildlife Trust movement and other conservation organisations have not stood silently by. What we have proved in the last couple of weeks is that, by working together, and with the might of all of our members and supporters behind us, we have a powerful voice. And this voice will continue to get louder.

If you have taken action, spoken out, shared your feelings, written to your MP, stamped your feet or taken to social channels to decry the #AttackOnNature and add volume to this collective voice then a heartfelt thank you.

I wanted to write to you today to ask you to be at the ready to do more to help nature fight back. As a response to the Government’s actions, the Wildlife Trust has launched a national campaign - #DefendNature - which we will be giving life to at a local level here in Somerset over the coming weeks and months and asking you to engage with. We really need you, and your voice, to stand up for nature, so please keep an eye on all of our channels so you know how you can take meaningful action in stopping the Government pushing our natural environment quite literally to the precipice of environmental catastrophe.

If you haven’t already taken action, seize this moment and visit the web page here to take just a few minutes to tweet, write or email your MP or Councillor, or make some noise on your social media channels by using the #DefendNature hashtag. Tell your friends and family to as well. We can say that it is really having an impact.

To finish, I just wanted to acknowledge that it’s easy for us working in conservation to get our heads around the enormity of what’s happening, but we realise that for most people it’s a minefield of legalese, acronyms, science, history, and policy all wrapped up in a huge swathe of emotion. To help, here are some of the terms you will hear in the media and a short summary of what they mean:

Deregulation

This one all revolves around the Retained EU Law Bill, which was introduced into the House of Commons on the 22nd September. It basically aims to reform and revoke hundreds of laws that have their origins in policies from the European Union - rules that protect hundreds of species and wildlife sites and stop our rivers and streams being polluted.

You might not know much about them for example, but the removal of Habitats Regulations is of particular concern. Whatever your views on Brexit, many of these laws have defended 18.8 million hectares of our most precious wildlife across the UK from inappropriate and damaging development for over 30 years providing environmental protections for our air, rivers, wildlife and food standards - helping the UK in the 1970s to remove our reputation of being the ‘dirty man of Europe’ by cleaning up our waters.

As our landscape is increasingly damaged by climate change – as seen by the wildfires, drought and flooding of this summer – we cannot afford not to protect our wild spaces to our best ability.

  • Read more about Deregulation and what it means in this Wildlife Trust Blog here.
  • Read this really useful Blog by our RSPB friends about Habitats Regulations here.

The Growth Plan

Teamed with this, a new planning and infrastructure bill and low regulation ‘investment zones’ were announced soon after, which will accelerate priority major infrastructure projects across England, bypassing environmental regulation, speeding up development in general and putting the homes of our most precious wildlife at threat from bulldozers and concrete. One of those ‘Investment Zones’ is right here in Somerset.

  • Read a really useful Guardian article by Tony Juniper here on the nature vs. economy debate.
  • Read the Government’s Growth Plan here.
  • More detail on the proposed Investment Zones’ here.

ELMS

We rely on a healthy nature environment to provide us with healthy food. Following Brexit, the then Environment Secretary, Michael Gove created a new scheme called ELMS to replace the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) - a forward-thinking scheme that would increase support for nature-friendly farming to secure a sustainable future for British farming & nature and support the UK’s progress to Net Zero. 

A rapid and worrying review of regulation for farmers and land managers in England was tabled as part of the recent announcements. We are hugely concerned that the Government is considering returning to a CAP-style system of providing subsidies based just on how much land you own, not how you manage it.  This is all happening in the name of increasing food security following events in Ukraine, with the public being presented with a choice of food or nature.  This is a divisive argument, and delays to these schemes are already challenging farming communities.

ELMS is about giving farmers the tools to deal with climate change and deliver environmental benefits that the market can’t provide - healthy soils, plentiful pollinators and clean water - all of which supports food production and security and builds sustainability back into our farming systems. 

We’ll keep you informed as we know more on this but the Government’s Food Security Report 2021 is clear:
‘‘The biggest medium to long term risk to the UK’s domestic production comes from climate change and other environmental pressures like soil degradation, water quality and biodiversity”.

The estimated cost to UK farmers of soil degradation alone is £1.2 billion each year. To secure a sustainable future for British food and farming, we need more nature. 

  • Read more about the risk to ELMS in the Wildlife Trust blog here.
  • Read the Guardian article here for a different perspective.
  • Read the Government’s Food Security report here.

Fracking

The Government has lifted the 2019 ban on fracking despite there (still) being no evidence it's safe. Fracking is the process of extracting gas and oil from shale rock, using machines that drill into the earth and inject liquid and materials at layers of rock to release the gas or oil inside - raising the risk of earth tremors.

Fracking doesn’t help to reduce household bills or tackle the energy crisis - something the Government’s own advisors have themselves stated. Instead it poses serious threats to wildlife and wild places and can cause significant disruption and danger to communities.

The review into fracking by the British Geological Survey (BGS), released in September 2022 doesn't conclude that fracking is safe so it's absurd that exploratory licences have been granted in areas that border national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and other protected areas – some of our most important sites for nature. The Government should be investing in renewables and energy efficiency measures to tackle the energy crisis and guarantee domestic energy production for the future.

Read more about how we can tackle the energy crisis in this Wildlife Trust blog here.

These issues really do affect us all, so I hope this information is both useful and serves to ignite an urgency in you to speak up now to ensure the natural world upon which all our lives depend today is still there for us tomorrow.

Take action today!

Related blog posts