The organisation’s £20million initiative to help wildlife recover has been hailed a success.
Natural England’s Species Recovery Programme [SRP] was designed to stem the tide of decline in fauna across the UK. As of 2023, the organisation introduced a Capital Grant Scheme to try and increase support for a range of projects, offering up to £500,000 per applicant.
In total, 63 individual projects have now benefited from this, involving 78 partners. Overall, £12.8million has come from direct funding, with £5.4million generated in match funding and a volunteer element valued at £1.2million to cover the costs.
Crunching the numbers further, Natural England has facilitated the creation and enhancement of 2,400hectares of wildlife-rich habitats, covering 260hectares of flower-rich grassland meadows, 405hectares of floodplain grasslands and 354hectares of broadleaved and wet woodland. Additionally, 50hectares of lowland and upland heathland, 100hectares of wetlands, 13hectares of lowland fen and 215 wildlife ponds have either been restored or established.
Some of Britain’s most-threatened species have benefited. For example, the lady’s slipper orchid is believed to have propagated in the wild for the first time in more than 30 years. 56,000 plugs of food plants relied on by butterflies including the marsh violet and small pearl-bordered fritillary and marsh fritillary.
Meanwhile, non-native invasive species have also been targeted by various initiatives, with 1,119mink traps deployed across 11 counties. As a result, 1,416 American minks have been caught and removed from the ecosystem — the mammals have led to a 9% decline in water vole populations, now counted amongst the most endangered animals in the UK.
Despite the progress, Britain’s wildlife remains in a dire straits. 12% of species remain in the ‘at risk’ category, and between 2012 and 2018 there was an average 3% decline in abundance across all taxonomic groups. Natural England is now expected to make an announcement about the next tranche of the Species Recovery Programme following consultation and assessment of impact to date. the next phase will run until 2030.
‘This story is illustrative of a key issue in this country – that public funding and philanthropy cannot restore nature as we need,’ said Penny Simpson, partner in the environmental law team at Freeths. ‘As stated by Tony Juniper and Richard Benwell this country needs private funding invested into nature through nature markets and this in turn needs more extensive ‘demand drivers’ to incentivise these markets.
‘A decision by Government to retain in full the existing mandatory BNG regime rather than to curtail it as has been suggested by the recent BNG consultation; and a greater recognition of the role of private markets in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill [are also needed],’ she continued. ‘The Government’s promised revised Environmental Improvement Plan will be crucial in this as will the way that this is rolled out to create sector targets which may well need to be mandatory not voluntary.’
Image: Jonathan Ridley / Unsplash
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