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This from Vix Lowthion, Newport. In her own words. Ed
Over the weekend I joined the RSPB. I’ve been a member of various other campaigning acronym groups for many years – CPRE, HIWT, NT and WWF to support the all the good work that they are doing for our environment. And I spent two days at Chale Show this summer with a Green Party tent right next to the RSPB one, chatting with the lovely stall holder about the work they do and putting the world to rights when it comes to the impact of climate change.
But I hadn’t joined them as a member – until now.
The Liz Truss government is only three-weeks-old today, and already the usually polite RSPB have accused them of a ‘attack on nature’ – but why?
The natural world will be impacted
The ‘mini-budget’ outlined that this government will be obsessed with economic growth at all costs, but these costs will be hugely damaging to the natural world:
- New low-tax investment zones will have “a liberalised planning framework to encourage rapid development and investment” which potentially tears up all the legal protections that wildlife has within our existing planning framework. These zones will be places where anything can be built, anywhere.
- The Environment Land Management Scheme (ELMS) devised by Gove was created to pay farmers and landowners to manage their land to protect nature. Some pilot schemes have created rare habitats and brought back species including nightingales, beavers and white stork. But the government confirmed in the last few days that they have cancelled meetings with interested landowners and the whole scheme is now up for review, possibly to be replaced by a yearly set sum for acreage of land, irrespective of whether it is managed to protect and enhance wildlife
- The retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill details how this conservative government plans to scrap 570 environment laws, rolled over from EU law after Brexit, which cover water quality, sewage pollution, clean air, habitat protections and the use of pesticides amongst others.
RSPB: We are currently planning a mass mobilisation of our members
As the RSPB tweeted over the weekend,
“Where you live, the wildlife and places you love, from the shires to the cities – all under threat from bulldozers, from concrete….We are currently planning a mass mobilisation of our members and supporters.”
The government say that they are emphasising food security and economic growth for our farmers and growers. But there is no food security without the natural world.
On average, UK has half its biodiversity left
The UK is already one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries, with on average about half its biodiversity left and in the bottom 10 per cent globally.
We have witnessed another summer of sewage being legally pumped onto our beaches and into our rivers, and now this quest for deregulation and economic growth is set to attack even further our natural world.
They have underestimated us
Join the fight against this government’s attack on nature: join the RSPB, the Wildlife Trust, the Woodland Trust and the Green Party.
They have underestimated us! The mobilisation is starting right here.
