UK government fails to halt wildlife declines

But a least the targets and reporting in the Biodiversity Action Plan Process enables us to make that judgement!


May 2010. The Government has quietly slipped out a report showing that more that twice as many of the Government's highest priority species for conservation are declining as are increasing and 5% of the species have actually been declared extinct since the start of the process in 1994.

Wildlife conservation organisations are unhappy that this report has been sat on for almost a year and been given such a low profile launch in the ‘International Year of Biodiversity'.

Underfunding
The animals and plants were protected under the 2006 Natural Environment and Communities Act and the 2004 Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act and all public bodies were given a duty to have regard to, or further, the conservation of the species. Despite this declines and losses continue. This is due to a profound underfunding of the conservation of wildlife and a failure to get Local Authorities and other Government departments to put their weight behind action to halt declines and habitat destruction.

On the positive side having these species and habitats highlighted as needing conservation action and being given targets and a formal reporting process means that the UK is able to clearly see how we have been conserving wildlife; not just the overall negative trend, but also examples where focused action has been successful and has saved species from probable extinction - for instance the Ladybird spider.

New government
The new Government has committed that ‘We will introduce measures to protect wildlife and promote green spaces and wildlife corridors in order to halt the loss of habitats and restore biodiversity.'

This work is urgently needed because we rely on wildlife for a healthy environment. For instance bees, moths and hoverflies pollinate £440 million pounds worth of crops every year but more than 250 pollinators are listed as needing conservation action on the UK BAP list.

There is also an urgent need to refresh the Biodiversity Action Plan process. At the start every species was given a biological target so that wildlife charities, government departments, funders and businesses could all work to a commonly agreed objective and the status of each species was assessed on a three year reporting cycle. The lists of threatened species were revised in 2007, but targets have not been set for the newly listed species, most existing targets for previously listed species come to an end in 2010, and there is no agreed process for reporting on the future status of the species.

British wildlife in crisis
"British wildlife is in crisis; species that have lived here for thousands of years are declining and disappearing. The UK and country authorities must now redouble their efforts if they are to have any hope of meeting the new EU target of ‘halting the loss of biodiversity and the degradation of ecosystem services in the EU by 2020, and restoring them in so far as feasible'." Said Matt Shardlow, Chief Executive of Buglife - the Invertebrate Conservation Trust.


http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/biodiversity-loss.html