Does nature benefit from protection?

By Henrietta Appleton, GWCT Policy Officer (England)

In the run up to the commencement of COP15 the role of protection in wildlife conservation has been promoted by a number of eNGOS so we thought it useful to consider whether nature benefits from protection – and therefore whether more is the answer.

We recently responded to an article in the Guardian about the Wildlife & Countryside Link (WCL) report on the limited progress that Government has made on meeting its 30x30 target – protecting 30% of our land and sea for nature by 2030. 

The GWCT has long expressed concern about the use of protection as a means of supporting species recovery – see for example Restoring the Balance by Dr Steve Tapper back in 2009 – as our experience suggests that it is active management (or interventions) that work; not simply a designation on a map. 

Of the 5 priorities for action WCL highlights, three relate to the protection of land. One of these was to legislate for the strengthening of the designated landscapes (National Parks and AONBs) statutory purpose towards nature outcomes including explicitly mentioning biodiversity that Government promised in its response to the Glover Review.

We see this as an important addition as conserving and enhancing biodiversity (which is typically a measure of variation at the genetic, species, and ecosystem level) is more relevant to policy ambitions than conserving and enhancing wildlife (a collective expression for the native fauna and flora of a region) and a necessary part of repurposing them to delivering a range of ecosystem services, not just cultural.

The other two relate to improving the condition of existing terrestrial protected sites to meet the legally binding Environment Act target to restore at least 75% of Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) to favourable condition by 2042 and to extend the protected sites network on land.

But the question remains will these result in the broad-based recovery in biodiversity that the 30x30 policy is designed to achieve? 

It will of course ensure that public monies are directed towards species recovery projects in these areas through mechanisms such as the Nature Recovery Network and ELMS.  This is clearly what the designated landscapes wanted.

In giving evidence to the House of Lords Land Use Committee representatives from the NPs and AONBs sought to emphasise the importance of ELMS in their ability to deliver on biodiversity and wildlife conservation.  However, the targeting of support towards designations has the potential to create a two-tier approach to wildlife conservation thereby ignoring species within the broader countryside.

In addition there are examples where habitats or species have been designated against the wishes of the landowner. That the species is present at all must surely be a testament to the existing land management? Why then will designation, which sometimes comes with a new set of management prescriptions, lead to any improvement – indeed there are cases where the opposite of the good intention has occurred. In these cases the principle of motivation and stakeholder engagement is ignored in favour of top-down protection.

The use of prescriptive support schemes and protection in species conservation and recovery, has been pursued for decades (see Same old, same old ).  In 2009 Dr Tapper noted that the decline in wildlife continues as our current system “… fails to find practical solutions to specific wildlife problems ...” with “.. wildlife protection .. a clumsy tool which sometimes misses the point”.

These points emphasize our concern about continuing to base our hopes for biodiversity recovery on protection - be that of land, sea or species.  Giving the water vole legal protection did not save it from decline as the true cause of its demise was predation by American mink.

Protecting and restoring Curlew habitat has not resulted in an improvement in breeding success as nest predation remains a key hurdle to conservation.  Indeed providing the perfect habitat can attract in species such as Curlew which might then be subject to failure due to the lack of other supporting measures.

Consequently we would like to see a flexible system that reflects the three key principles of motivation, management and measurability.

The GWCT has experience of working with individual landowners, farmers and land managers who have had notable successes in reversing wildlife declines as their approach is based on individual (and collective) motivation.  Using prescriptive approaches constrains ambition and often is not attractive to an individual as it does not meet his objective or work with his farming system.

Using ‘bottom-up’ mechanisms such as Farmer Clusters to deliver wildlife conservation based on motivation is likely to be more successful as those involved will wish to see success and therefore undertake due care and diligence in the adoption of the necessary measures.  This links neatly with our second principle of management. 

A common theme in our recent policy blogs has been an emphasis on the need for management (or intervention).  For regular readers you will know that for evidence the Allerton project is an exemplar. 

Through the management of field margins for nature including the application of some nitrogen to encourage seed production in wildlife mixes, the provision of diverse habitat, the use of supplementary feeding and the removal of predators during the breeding season the project can clearly demonstrate increasing wildlife abundance (songbirds, hares, moths) in contrast to the regional and national pictures.

Our final point, measurability, underpins the above two and again is clearly demonstrated by the Allerton project.  The definition of measurability says that “objectives should be … achievable” (our emphasis) and we would argue that this is only possible through following scientific evidence.

GWCT research demonstrates time and again that habitat conservation, restoration and connectivity alone is not enough.  Other measures and interventions are necessary.  To take the water vole example forward, the Trust developed the Mink Raft, which could be set as a monitoring platform and then converted to a live trap once mink presence was confirmed. This has been deployed as part of mink control on progressively larger geographical scales and was used in support of the reintroduction of the water vole to the River Dore in the Welsh Borders.

So where does this leave National Parks and AONBs?  They definitely have a role to play but we question whether it should be about biodiversity and environmental delivery.  Far better would be to focus effort on managing the impacts of such designations on rural services, housing and access and monitoring the outcomes of biodiversity and environmental policies to ensure they support the landscape outcomes for which the designation was originally made; land use planning and monitoring rather than land use practice.

So in answer to the question posed above, the real answer lies not in protecting more land but in harnessing the motivation of the individuals on the ground and in supporting the management measures that are proven to be successful – whether that is habitat provision or food availability or predator control or all three.  Policy should support a more flexible and responsive conservation regime that focuses on conservation rather than protection as only in this way can we ensure that ambitions for species recovery are achievable and targets met.   

And don’t just take our word for it.  This is a concern that experts worldwide have expressed.  A report in January this year[1] emphasized the need for a more nuanced and flexible approach to conservation stating that “"There's good evidence that we will fail again to meet ambitious international biodiversity objectives if there's too much focus on protected areas at the expense of other urgent actions.".   You have been warned!