Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust

THE Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust has published a list of urgent priorities for all would-be MPs to sign up to ahead of this year’s general election as it fights to put nature at the heart of the upcoming campaign.

The trust is calling on local voters to ask their candidates to share the targets – bringing back lost wildlife, ending river pollution and water scarcity, funding wildlife-friendly farming, enabling healthy communities and tackling climate change.

The campaign comes after 2023 was declared the hottest year on record and September’s State of Nature report concluded that one in six species in the UK was at risk of extinction here.

Legislation that protects the natural world is also being dismantled and watered down.

The general election will make 2024 a defining year for nature’s recovery as the next government will determine whether the 2030 targets of halting nature’s decline and protecting 30 per cent of land and sea are met or not.

Estelle Bailey, chief executive of the trust, says: “We are facing a nature and climate crisis the like of which we have never seen. It’s getting worse and time is running out.

“We are already seeing the effects of climate change on mammals, birds, butterflies and plants at the nature reserves that we manage for wildlife and that’s adding to decades of destructive pressure from pollution, unsustainable development destroying habitats and industrial agriculture.

“What happens at the election could not be more crucial. Whichever party wins could seal the fate of our turtle doves, tortoiseshell butterflies, dormice, hedgehogs and hundreds more species.

“But whatever they do for nature will also have a huge effect on our wellbeing, our physical and mental health.

“Whichever way you vote this year, please — ask your candidates to sign up to our five priorities and vote for nature.”

The trust’s five priorities are:

1. Bring back the UK’s lost wildlife: The population of water voles has declined by 90 per cent since the Seventies but the trust’s water vole recovery project has helped to increase the local range of water voles by more than 50 per cent over the past 15 years.

2. End river pollution and water scarcity: Chalk streams are one of the world’s rarest habitats with only around 250 left and 80 per cent of those in southern England. They are under growing threat of having water abstracted and sewage pumped in.

3. Fund wildlife-friendly farming: Industrial agriculture has caused huge damage to wildlife by replacing mixed habitat with vast monoculture crops, killing animals with pesticides and leaking fertilisers into natural environments. The trust works with farmers who prove that wildlife-friendly farming is possible and
profitable.

4. Enable healthy communities: Spending time in nature has been shown to help lower blood pressure, reduce stress hormone levels and ease anxiety but growing numbers of people are disconnected from nature.

5. Tackle the climate emergency.

For more information, visit

bbowt.org.uk/election-2024

Lis Speight