NEWS AND COMMENT: The Times today reports that one in six British species face extinction with some bright spots amid the gloom in respect of the Eurasian Beaver, Red Kite and Cartilage lichen. The environmental editor of the newspaper tells us that one in five species in the UK have declined over the past 50 years. That is the sobering assessment as per an analysis by the Zoological Society of London, RSPB and other conservation groups who worked in partnership with the UK government’s nature advisers.
It is called the State of Nature report. They found that since 1970, of the 753 species on land and in freshwater, 19% had declined in numbers and the figure is up to 13% for the past four years.
Already extinct in the UK are a total of 151 native species. These include the great auk, the Norfolk damselfly and a fish called the burbot. One in six species is threatened.
Prof Richard Gregory, head of monitoring conservation science at the RSPB said:
“The big message, sobering message, is that the state of the UK’s nature and the wider environment, based upon the indices that we’ve got, continues to decline and degrade. So it’s a real downward pattern of decline, a consistent pattern of decline.”
The UK government should be uncomfortable with the report. More so because recently, they have forsaken, it seems to me, any real attempts to conserve native species by dropping plans laid down by Carrie Johnson when her husband was Prime Minister. At that time Lord Goldsmith, a friend, was in charge of the conservation, in effect, in Britain. He’s been sacked and Johnson has gone as we all know. This started a downward decline in efforts to protect native species in the country.
Remarkably, the current government, in 2018, set out the 25-year plan to “leave our environment in a better state than we found it”. One has to laugh at that statement now. Particularly as Rishi Sunak, the current prime minister, has restarted extracting oil off the Scottish coast which will create massive amounts of pollution to the environment.
Tony Juniper, chairman of Natural England, the regulator, said that the findings were “grim news”. Although apparently, he was optimistic because there are legally enshrined targets on data recovery. I wouldn’t be so sure myself.
Prof Fiona Matthews at the University of Sussex highlighted the fact that some species are faring worse than others. Field roles and other small furry mammals which are crucial to the ecosystems are “disappearing before our eyes”.
Invertebrate numbers have on average fallen 30% since 1970. Hoverflies and moths which are crucial to pollinating crops have declined by 18% on average. Ground beetles, wasps and ladybirds which assist farmers by preying on crop pests have declined by 34%.
Thirteen species of seabirds have fallen in number by an average of 24% since 1986. Since then, thousands of seabirds have been killed by bird flu. This includes 7000 seabirds of the species kittiwakes, puffins and guillemots.
There have been some success stories; some restoration of peatlands in the north and west for example.
Francesca Mancini at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology said that tackling the crisis requires a “complex approach”.
She said that: “Habitat restoration projects have been successful and very good; we need to scale that up massively. But also, the majority of land in this country is agriculture, so we’re going to have to have an impact on that.”
There will be changes to awarding agricultural subsidies to encourage farmers to help nature by planting hedgerows for example.
Do you see the prospect of change in which Britain’s natural world is better protected in the future? I don’t. I am very pessimistic. The general trend in the UK is a massively increased human population. When there is an increased human population there is inevitably destruction of nature. One follows the other as night follows day.
