By Henrietta Appleton, Policy Officer (England)
There were two Westminster Hall debates recently that considered our nature crisis – one on species recovery led by Sarah Champion MP (Lab) and one on biodiversity loss led by Dr Caroline Lucas MP (Green Party).
Both covered many of the usual concerns about the causes of the declines in our species and rightly expressed concern that the government is not addressing some of the ‘low regret’ options that would support recovery – the £30 swift brick being legislated for in housebuilding being one that was mentioned.
The debates also highlighted the need to get the new support structure for farming right, but as Chris Grayling MP (Con) said, this is a matter of “some tweaks”.
The new ELMS has evolved over the recent 2-3 years and is now providing a much better foundation of support for environmental good practice through the Sustainable Farming Incentive, which includes many of the options we expected to be in the local nature recovery tier (see announcement of expanded and improved SFI offer, 21 May 2024), as this is where the targeted interventions necessary for many of our declining species (flora, fauna or especially avian) should sit.
Given that almost 40 years of focus on habitat provision and restoration alone has not resulted in reversals in many of our red-listed species, it is time that further tools were added to the conservation toolbox, including predation management.
Whilst the national picture may be of decline, it is disappointing that the numerous examples of private sector success in restoring and conserving our biodiversity are not often reported – except that of the rewilding project at Knepp, which is merely one approach and, given the changes to management and land uses, they are likely to be attracting new species at the expense of others.
Instead, as usual, the focus on reversing our biodiversity losses was on protection (which is not the silver bullet many think – see below). So, it was with great pleasure I read the contribution of Sir Bill Wiggin MP (Con) to the species recovery debate.
He outlined the contribution made by those who practice the management of legally controllable (and abundant) species such as foxes and corvids to a range of species including the red-listed curlew and the importance of adopting a management model based on the three-legged stool of food, habitat and protection from predation at nesting and brood rearing. All three elements are important – not just one.
I was also concerned about some of the statements made in the debates. Whilst the rhetoric is understandably emotive and charged (it needs to be to get people to listen), often the statements being made either do not reflect the weight of scientific evidence or are not substantiated by evidence.
Before I address some of these you will note I use the word ‘weight’ of scientific evidence. Whilst both scientific and experiential evidence have a role to play, in monitoring for example, it is important that policy decisions are made based on robust, high-quality scientific evidence.
This, of course, can present a problem in the environment where nothing is as controllable as in laboratory conditions, but there are research formats that provide more robust outcomes than others. Too often policy decisions are being made on opinion, not evidence.
Areas of concern were:
Pesticides
“Emergency approvals of neonicotinoids, a poison so powerful that a single teaspoon is enough to kill 1.25 billion bees” (Dr Caroline Lucas MP, Green Party)
Such metrics are powerful and in undiluted form neonicotinoids are lethal to a range of invertebrates. But no attempt is made to explain that what is being approved is their use as a seed dressing in the sugar beet industry to allow successful crop establishment.
Sugar beet is precision sown, and achieving an optimum plant population is key to maximising yield and resource use efficiency. Applied in such a way and in accordance with best practice to minimise secondary risks, threats to invertebrates can be minimised and as sugar beet doesn’t flower as part of its cropping cycle the risk of insects and bees being exposed to the neonicotinoid via its pollen is nil.
There is also the bigger picture of food security and exporting our environmental footprint overseas – points we have made in previous blog posts (here and here).
Peatlands
“Unforgivably, it [peatland] continues to be destroyed. The Government have abjectly failed to deliver a complete ban on peat burning. … We need to end that devastating practice.” (Dr Caroline Lucas MP, Green Party) and “I have been campaigning to prevent heather burning on peatlands, as the fires damage the peat and burn the moss that grows on top” (Olivia Blake MP, Lab)
Regular readers and members of the Trust will know that the management of our moorlands (including upland peat) is a subject of polarised debate. We continue to try to bring balance to the argument by calling out statements that are fundamentally incorrect – see Misleading statements on peatland and heather burning: Our response to Greenpeace UK.
But to little avail as the debate is not over the science but over the politics of grouse shooting – typified by the following statement by Dr Caroline Lucas MP: “Peat continues to be set alight each year simply so that a wealthy minority can engage in grouse shooting.” Which is sad, as the loser is our peatland and heather moorland habitats and the specialist species that they support.
Without repeating our concerns about ill-informed statements (for those see the link above), I would like to callout the point about peat being burnt/damaged mentioned in the quotes. This is not the aim of prescribed burning and would be counter-productive as it would damage the heather rootstock.
Let’s be clear: the surface vegetation is burnt, the peat is not. Managing this surface vegetation (by prescribed burning, cutting or grazing) is important in mitigating the risk of wildfire, which does burn into the peat – at Roaches Moor in 2018 50 years’ worth of peat was destroyed releasing more than 11,000 t of carbon dioxide.
In addition, scientific evidence has shown that the low-intensity, low-severity prescribed burns used to manage the surface vegetation do not destroy the moss. In fact, by removing the heather canopy, more light reaches the moss layer supporting its growth. This is significant as Sphagnum mosses are a key peat-forming species.
Protected sites
“We will reverse the decline of nature by 2030 and double nature by 2050 by increasing the protected area network from 8% of land to at least 16%.” (Wera Hobhouse MP, Lib Dem)
Where is the evidence that protection supports landscape-scale nature recovery? There is no doubt that some species benefit from protecting their ecological niche or protecting them from predation – the removal of American mink in support of water vole conservation comes to mind. But the national picture does not support this.
Nature reserves often come with restrictions on management practices. GWCT research has demonstrated that for many farmland, woodland and upland species, management is vital to ensuring that the conditions for their conservation remain. In addition, with 70% of the landscape farmed this is where the focus should be – alongside sustainable food production.
The Allerton Project farm has shown this to be possible – and in the process is bucking the national moth population trends (in abundance and number) – and performing better than the nearby nature reserve. Who’d have thought it – a commercial farm using pesticides and producing food delivering more for nature than a nature reserve!
Pollinators
“The loss of pollinating insects sets us on a road of cyclical starvation.” (Alex Sobel MP, Lab)
Whilst the loss of pollinators is a worry, statements such as this are incorrect. Pollinators are vital for wildflower, vegetables and fruit tree reproduction for example, but 72% of our arable crops by area are cereals which are wind or self-pollinated.
In addition, the focus on pollinators such as bees, whilst easy to engender interest from the public, is distracting from a range of other invertebrates that play an equally important role in our food production system – the natural pest predators. Arguably this role will become more important in the future as we seek to reduce our dependence on inorganic pesticides.
The Trust has just published a paper that looks at the long-term insect data from the Sussex Study, which samples invertebrates on farmed land (i.e. not the surrounding countryside, hedges or margins) and it makes interesting reading.
Whilst some functional groups, including predators, declined significantly, there was no detectable change in pollinators (moths, sawflies and hoverflies as well as bees/wasps were monitored) – but this could be explained by the focus on arable fields.
Although the paper shows an overall 37% decline in invertebrate abundance between 1970 and 2019, the detail suggests that climate change may be altering our insect assemblage; some pollinators (such as thrips, moths, sawflies, beetles, hoverflies) and some predator numbers are increasing due to increases in temperature, while other plant-feeding insects show negative relationships with increasing temperature.
This is supported by data from our demonstration farm at Allerton, which suggests that annual drivers of variation such as weather conditions are acting in synchrony across habitats/land uses.
Whilst the two Westminster Hall debates did much to review the weaknesses in our current policy approaches, it is concerning that our MPs are prepared to use ill-informed or unevidenced statements. Parliament is there to hold government to account and to ensure that policy is effective. The biodiversity disaster is therefore two-fold – the loss of species and the lack of appropriate and effective scrutiny by the legislature.