500 species lost from England in 200 years
11/03/2010 10:31:23
Red kites are one of the success stories, but there are hundreds of species still on the brink in England.
English wildlife report shows it's time for action, says RSPBMarch 2010. A report on the wildlife of England, published by Natural England, shows that almost 500 species have been lost from England, with most of these losses in the last 200 years. As European environment ministers gather next week to discuss a new target for wildlife conservation in Europe, the RSPB is urging the UK minister to secure an ambitious target to help safeguard our wildlife's future.
Success stories - Bittern, large blue butterfly and red kite
Commenting on the report, the RSPB's Dr Sue Armstrong-Brown, said: "With successes like the ongoing recovery of the bittern, large blue butterfly, red kite, ladybird spider and cirl bunting, we know that targeted species conservation works. Natural England has played a key role in most species recovery programmes and we need more of this from them in the future.
412 highest priority species confined to less than 6 sites
"We have presided over the longest and steepest wildlife declines in generations. The report confirms that 412 of the highest priority species are confined to five or fewer sites. These species will continue to need targeted funding, especially through farming subsidies, and site-specific management advice, and we urgently need new ways of protecting wildlife across our countryside and seas, alongside human activity as well as in special nature reserves.
Landscape scale protection
"England's protected areas, which are important at national and international levels, should be at the heart of a landscape-scale gear change in protecting wildlife. Although we have failed to meet conservation targets for habitat restoration set for this year, many sites are recovering and more effort could yield further progress."
Threats
"We need to redouble our efforts to stop extinction and prevent England's wildlife getting on that slippery slope in the first place. This means we need to: complete the protected area network, particularly at sea; reduce human impacts such as damaging airport, barrage and infrastructure developments; reduce the impact of non native species on native ones; and most of all ensure that cuts in spending do not threaten our future well-being.
"2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity: it is also the year we failed to meet the target of halting biodiversity loss. Most importantly it is the year when we should agree 2020 targets for protecting wildlife at European and global levels. Hopefully, real political determination will help us to meet our obligations to the other species with which we share the planet."
Read the comments about this article and leave your own comment
How's this for an embarrasment. The UK stands out as being the only country in Europe (other than Liechtenstein and Luxembourg) that doesn't have an IUCN category II national park (Switzerlands very large wilderness is described by them as a national park). We are also bordered by countries who in the last few years have identified areas of wilderness that if they don't entirely have that essential quality now, will develop that way in the future as extractive activities are withdrawn e.g. France, Spain, Ireland, Portugal. In fact only Holland and Belgium of our near neighbours in Europe have yet to go for wilderness, while Germany has a target of 2% of wilderness by 2020. None of this has required wilderness legislation, just aspiration. Their national protected area legislation is well enough worded that restrictions can be put on land use in designated nature reserves, with the aim of removing extractive activities. Public ownership is often the key. Thus continental Europe has a much higher aspiration for wildland than the UK, based on the individual nation's national protected area systems and the legislation under which they are designated.
The IUCN guidelines system is the driver for this national aspiration. It is based on protecting ecological processes in wild land rather than individual species or habitats. The Natura 2000 system, which is species and habitat based, works for wildland only where it already exists! This can be shown by the type and distribution of SACs designated for such as wolf, lynx, bear, bison, artic fox and wolverine, and with a trend that shows a diminution travelling westward into the Atlantic bioregion. You can't report on a favourable condition of species in a SAC multiply designated for wolf, bear and lynx if there isn't the wild habitat present to successfully support those three species. There is also a distinction between those habitats designated under the Natura 2000 system that are stable without intervention, and those that require intervention to maintain them, again with a marked E-W trend. The UK is covered in secondary habitats as a result of millennia of agricultural exploitation. The real extinctions are the extirpation of umbrella species because they inconvenienced farmers. Thus bear, wolf, lynx are gone. At the next level, pine marten and wildcat persecuted so that the range and numbers are massively reduced. Domestically, fox, raptors, other mustelids, and corvids all persecuted.
Our compromise as always is to expect wild nature to have to co-exist within farmed landscapes. Even in our "nature reserves" the land is still farmed to maintain the condition of secondary habitat, because we give priority to species in those semi-agricultural landscapes. Until we develop a system of publicly-owned protected areas of sufficient size and with ecological process alone as the criteria, then we will continue to be the stinker in Europe - a small-minded island race.
www.self-willed-land.org.uk
Posted by: Mark Fisher | 12 Mar 2010 11:38:44 AM