The state we’re in?

Red kite

The report State of Nature  published this week by twenty five  conservation bodies paints a worrying picture of the decline of wildlife in the UK over the past 40-50 years. While there have been great individual success stories such as the reintroduction of the red kite and the large blue  butterfly, the news that many birds, butterflies, mammals and  molluscs have had a bumpy ride makes for uncomfortable reading.

It pulls together and presents in a readable way, yet again, the evidence, if any more were needed, that our countryside and our  seas are becoming more impoverished places than ever. Where declining populations of fewer species fail to thrive against a backdrop of  inexorable pressures from climate change, habitat fragmentation,  urbanisation, agriculture and pollution.

But the report  begs the question that if we want more red squirrels, capercaillie, stag beetles or speckled woods in future, where do we start? Continue with a  myriad of individual interventions or develop some more radical new approach to conserving the countryside? Only the latter will do, in my view.

Red squirrel

Of course we have come a long way in recent years in articulating a new way of conserving nature. The Lawton Review talks about creating resilient networks of habitats in the future across the wider countryside which requires habitat expansion as well as protection of special sites, connected rather than fragmented habitats. A more resilient landscape will be good for a whole host of individual species, the habitats that they depend on and the valuable functions which nature offers to society ‘free of charge’.

What we now need is a an extended coalition of conservation interests to agree not just on the evidence and not just on the new paradigm of landscape scale action, but on the specific tools and mechanisms to create a landscape and seascape richer in wildlife for all of us. Nature Improvement Areas and Local Nature Partnerships are part of the toolkit, but we need other novel ways of engaging a wide range of landowning and managing interests. The  real challenge is  how to build the kind of collaborative action which must involve  us all and how to  harness that evidence, knowledge and concern to drive real and concerted action  for all our wildlife for the future.

Hilary Allison, Policy Director

A21: “They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum”

Continuing our updates on the A21 public inquiry, Richard tells us about his day cross-examining witnesses:

Richard at the Inquiry

“Day 4 dealt with the evidence presented by the Highways Agency on ecology and nature conservation, and on planning. My aim in cross-examining the witnesses was to establish the full extent of ancient woodland that will be lost, confirm the important differences between ‘mitigation’ and ‘compensation’ for that loss (and the subsequent evaluation of this when looking at the benefits of the scheme), and the value that is attached to ancient woodland.  

I remain concerned that the compensation measures have crept into the balance of need for the scheme (contrary to Natural England advice), and was disappointed to learn that the Highways Agency doesn’t consider that all ancient woodland is automatically of national significance. I feel strongly about this, given that ancient woodland and its importance is mentioned several times in the National Planning Policy Framework, other government national policy documents, and by government representatives speaking in parliament. 

Kent Wildlife Trust and RSPB have maintained their objections in principle to the loss of ancient woodland, while continuing to discuss the mitigation and compensation measures. This mirrors our approach, as recommended by Natural England in its standing advice on ancient woodland in the south-east. It is therefore a mystery, and a disappointment to me, why Natural England didn’t follow its own advice and object to the loss of ancient woodland in principle while continuing the valuable dialogue on species mitigation. 

I’ll be at the Inquiry again next Thursday to listen to supporters and objectors to the road widening, and on Friday 24^th to present my own evidence on behalf of the Trust.  Thanks again for the messages of support, and the emails sent to the Highways Agency.”

Richard Barnes, Senior Conservation Adviser

Follow the Inquiry’s progress throughout the next few days.

HS2 – where natural and financial capital collide

Yesterday I went to a meeting hosted by the Natural Capital Committee which was set up by government to help it understand better how the state of the natural environment affects the economy and wellbeing of us all.

Sessile oak leaves in autumn

Work has begun on producing a balance sheet for natural capital assets which will sit alongside the Treasury’s financial balance sheet of UK PLC. The government hopes to have natural capital accounts in place by 2020. This will help it recognise the value of not just the country’s financial assets but also its environmental assets, such as woods, farmland, soils, water, energy and so on. This in turn will help it make decisions based on true sustainability rather than solely on GDP and economic growth which largely ignores environmental costs.

It was also the day that two reports about HS2 were published. Part of the rationale for HS2 is that it will stimulate economic growth yet the National Audit Office report has queried whether the financial costs and benefits of HS2 were as sound as has been portrayed by its supporters. The other report by HS2 itself set out much more detail on the environmental impact. It looks superficial and incomplete; it also needs the NAO treatment on the green detail. In fact, neither the financial nor the environmental case make HS2 look like a world class exemplar sustainable project.

This set me thinking further about how decisions around HS2 might be different if this project was being discussed in 2020 with natural capital accounting in place. Its claims to be a green transport solution would have been exposed much earlier given it takes no account of the damage to and destruction of large amounts of natural capital, (currently 67 ancient woods along the entire length of the route from London to Leeds and Manchester).

Indeed taking both the economic and the environmental balance sheet into account, instead of being hailed as giving impetus to growth, it might even be seen as pushing us into environmental recession as our total balance sheet of financial and environmental capital becomes further depleted. And it might mean that the Woodland Trust would not have to spend its time fighting the principle of ancient woodland destruction and compensation.

Natural capital accounting has not yet been born but it could be a really powerful policy tool to help us make better more sustainable decisions on behalf of us all. Let’s hope it happens, and soon.

A21 Inquiry: “You don’t know what you got till it’s gone”

As part of the public inquiry into the A21 widening scheme, we are giving evidence on behalf of the ancient woodland at risk, and also cross-examining the Highways Agency’s witnesses.

** Latest: ITV Meridian 4:30pm news (Tuesday 14th May) **

Our Richard is in Kent for the Inquiry – over to you Richard for the first day’s update:  

“Today (Tuesday 14th May) I attended the opening day of the A21 Public Inquiry, feeling buoyed up by the comments to my first blog and the lyrics of Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi.  

The proposed scheme would entail the loss of 9 ha of ancient woodland, to which we object in principle.  Our aim is to get proper recognition of the loss of ancient woodland, and remind the Inspector this cannot be addressed by “mitigation”, or the low level of compensation suggested. 

Media interest has been high, with my colleague Oliver featuring in last week’s local coverage by BBC and ITV, and I was interviewed twice as I walked into the venue for the Inquiry. 

Richard being interviewed by Meridian

Watch Oliver’s interview on the BBC

Today the Highways Agency presented evidence on the overview of the scheme, and engineering issues.  The overview included recording the number of objections, and this noted the surge of emails from WT supporters, with 831 new objections registered by this morning!  These will add real weight to the evidence that I’ll be presenting on Friday 24th May. 

After cross examining today, I will be back in action again this Friday (17^th), tackling the ecological and planning evidence submitted by the Highways Agency, and of course posting an update in Woodland Matters! 

Richard Barnes, Senior Conservation Adviser

Follow the Inquiry’s progress throughout the next few days.

Homo sapiens. Really?

Daily carbon dioxide levels have exceeded 400 parts per million, according to last Thursday’s US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report. This has never happened before in human history: the last time was between three and five million years ago. As measured from the top of a Hawaiian volcano it was a really bad day on planet Earth.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) warned that we “have entered a new danger zone”, with profound threats to human society. “In the face of clear and present danger, we need a policy response which truly rises to the challenge. We still have a chance to stave off the worst effects of climate change, but this will require a greatly stepped-up response across all three central pillars of action: action by the international community, by government at all levels, and by business and finance”.

These threats to human society also impact the millions of other species we inequitably share the planet with. A study in Nature Climate Change this week paints a stark future for wildlife, with around two thirds of plants and one third of animals under serious threat if we don’t act fast enough to limit emissions.

Yet for all this the UK’s overall carbon footprint is still growing. Last month the Committee for Climate Change highlighted the discord between the figures reported as part of our legally binding commitments under the Kyoto Protocol (requiring a reduction of 7% below the baseline emissions year of 1990), and what’s really going on.

Mauna Loa Observatory

It turns out we’ve been offshoring those emissions for the last 20 years. China is now the world’s manufacturing centre: the emissions happen over there, so not our problem even if it is us buying all that stuff. Globalisation is complete, even to the point of exporting emissions. But our true carbon footprint, as far as anyone’s best guess goes, is 10% higher than it was two decades ago. The UK is now the world’s second biggest importer of embodied carbon emissions.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change’s defence of the discrepancy is almost pathetic. “For specific reasons” it uses three different ways to “estimate” greenhouse gas emissions. The first relates to those emissions happening within our territorial boundary. The second rather baffling method is based on UK “residents”, including the emissions of UK businesses overseas and excluding overseas business operations in the UK. The third is the Full Monty, including all those emissions that we have outsourced to places like China, India and Brazil.

Unforgivably, given that we are generally exporting those emissions to countries without Kyoto commitments, we report “our” emissions using the strictly UK-only method. Neither lies, damned lies nor statistics will hold back global warming. Only global action will, but that starts at home.

Nick Atkinson, Carbon Leader

Here we go again!

The dust hasn’t yet settled on the Oaken Wood Public Inquiry, and already the Trust is having to stand up for ancient woodland in Kent at another public inquiry. This time it’s the proposed widening of the A21, between Tonbridge and Pembury, from single to dual carriageway, entailing the destruction of 9 Ha of ancient woodland adjoining the existing road. The way this Inquiry will run is slightly different from the normal inquiry under the Planning Act, which comes about after an initial refusal by the LPA, or a call in by the Secretary of State (as in the case of Oaken Wood). A Highways Agency Inquiry is the mechanism the Planning Inspectorate uses to make a recommendation, which then informs the Secretary of State’s decision on whether a highways scheme should be approved or rejected.

The proposals suggest planting new woodland as “mitigation”, a particular point we will pick up as you can’t mitigate for destruction, merely “compensate”. This isn’t idle pedantry, as Natural England’s advice states that “measures such as the provision of replacement habitat which seek to address issues of loss or deterioration of ancient woodland are not ‘benefits‘ within the meaning of the NPPF”. If the scheme is approved, we also think much more compensation than proposed is required.

The Trust isn’t against road-building in principle, just when it threatens ancient woodland. This scheme could divide local opinion, as it is a busy stretch of road between two sections of dual carriageway, but it appears that the on-going development of an out-of-town shopping centre has made the situation worse. Talking to a cab driver taking me from the station to the Pre-Inquiry meeting (at an out-of-town hotel…), that new development doesn’t include public transport infrastructure, or a dedicated road network to spare the busy A21. For a commuter going beyond Pembury towards Hastings, the A21 reverts back to single carriageway within a mile.

As if to emphasise the need for the Trust’s involvement, when I walked down the slip-road from the Pre-Inquiry meeting, a young wild boar crossed in front of me, and posed by the sign.

A wild boar drops in early for the inquiry.

The inquiry itself is due to begin next week Tuesday 14th May at the Mercure Hotel, Pembury at 10am. Feel free to share your views about the ancient woodland through our website.

Richard Barnes, Senior Conservation Advisor

New environmental indicators announced

You may have missed it; yesterday the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs launched the England Natural Environment Indicators. Yeah, we all go, what? Why?

Well the why is easy to answer, the Coalition Government in the Natural Environment White Paper made a commitment:

90  We will develop a set of key indicators by Spring 2012 to track progress on the ambitions of this White Paper.

European hare

Yesterday’s launch was the publication of the report on those indicators. This is not a new idea and we have had biodiversity indicators before, but these are aimed to address some of the underlying themes of biodiversity conservation.

But what are the indicators and what relevance do they have? Many of us are involved in formal or informal monitoring of the natural world; in my little patch I have seen an increase in the numbers of hares but a decrease in the number of hedgehogs, but are either of these facts significant and should we be looking to take action to deal with any potential causes of the changes?

The UK has a long history of collecting information on species and habitats. Repeated surveys over significant periods of time can be used to evaluate the impact of policies and actions to conserve biodiversity. But data analysis in this form is scientific and impenetrable to the untrained, hence the idea of a headline suite of indicators, easily understood and communicated to all, supported by additional data and background information to aid interpretation and provide more detail.

There are a number of elements that go to make a good indicator: detailed, reliable, responsive, policy relevant, etc. Indicators can be a great way of demonstrating that action is valuable to a sceptical public or Treasury. But there is always the risk that the policy tries to fix the indicator rather than the underlying biodiversity issues.

Green woodpeckers are woodland specialists

What does this new suite of indicators tell us about woodland? Of the old style indicators, both widespread breeding birds and butterflies in woodland showed long term declines (comparing 1990 to 2011) but more recent stability. However, this masks some interesting individual stories with coal tit, amongst others, increasing by more than 25% whilst willow tit has declined by up to 92% in some areas. Many of the declines in both groups are linked to changes in woodland structure caused by cessation of active management and increases in deer browsing, but the some of the bird species worst hit are long distance migrants where non-UK impacts are causing concern.

One of the newer indicators introduced is seeking to assess the management concerns by monitoring the percentage of woodland in active management. There is no long term data but the short term analysis suggests that the situation is improving.

There is an indicator of forest carbon stock (improving) and a new indicator of ease of access to local woodland, which has yet to be developed but will be based on the Woodland Trust data from Woods for People.

What is obviously lacking is any measurement of either woodland cover or rate of woodland creation. Unfortunately this indicator set pre-dates the Government Forestry and Woodlands Policy Statement of January 2013, which set a new target of achieving 12% woodland cover by 2060, but this is a good example of where indicators can be really useful. Monitoring an indicator over a five or ten year period would allow us to judge whether the policy and actions set in place are likely to result in the aim identified or whether intervention needs to take place.

So, indicators, interesting and useful, but not in themselves the solution to declines in biodiversity.

Frances Winder, Conservation Policy Officer