Plan to protect England's wildlife unveiled

Hundreds of thousands of hectares of "priority habitats" for wildlife will be created under a new government strategy to protect England's wildlife, while existing important habitats and sites of special scientific interest will be restored. Urban green spaces will be one of the first areas of focus, as government-sponsored research has found that having access to a green space improves people's physical and mental health. Farmers will also be linchpins of the plan, as most of the effort to protect native species and foster wildlife and plant species will rely on them to opt into subsidy schemes to leave field margins uncultivated and farm less intensively. The government admitted there was scant funding for the new biodiversity push, and said most of the money needed would have to come from subsidies under the common agricultural policy. Spelman said: "Our wildlife is not only something that we should value because it's nice to look at. Nature underpins our very existence, giving us clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and healthy food to eat." But conservation groups were sceptical, fearing that the lack of clear funding streams and confusion surrounding the targets, as well as a reliance on voluntary initiatives and the government's drive to open up more land to developers, would all make it difficult to reverse the decline in biodiversity around the country. Neil Sinden, policy director at the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), said: "Delivery [of the plans] will be frustrated, if not impossible, without a fundamental rethink of the government's proposals for planning reform. Recently published draft national planning policies threaten large areas of countryside, which will make the desired landscape-scale approach to wildlife conservation very difficult to achieve." Andy Atkins, executive director at Friends of the Earth , called the plans "vague". Mike Clarke, chief executive of the RSPB , warned: "We need a more determined focus on the health of individual priority species. These are the currency of biodiversity, a vital part of our natural capital." The main pledges include an extra 200,000 hectares to be labelled "priority habitats" containing important plant and animal species, which will gain special attention; 90% of "priority habitats" and at least half of all sites of special scientific interest will be improved to ensure they are in a "favourable" condition by 2020; at least 15% of wildlife sites currently graded "very poor" will be restored; at least 17% of land and inland water in England will be improved through a new scheme to create "nature improvement areas" where government agencies and the public will work together to maintain plant and animal life. Spelman pointed to recent successes in bringing back species from the brink: otters are now present in every county in England, after decades when they were nearly driven to extinction; and stone curlews are on the way back. The new strategy, called Biodiversity 2020: A strategy for England's wildlife and ecosystem services , is a result of the global agreement last year at the Convention on Biological Diversity conference in Nagoya, Japan, to slow and eventually halt the loss of species. The UK is the first European Union member state to follow up with its own biodiversity strategy. Spelman also launched a national wildlife gardening competition , to be run by The Wildlife Trusts and The Royal Horticultural Society with funding from Defra.