The threat to biodiversity is no less than posed by climate change – the cuts to UKs conservation budgets over the last decade have fundamentally weakened our ability to restore biodiversity.
The government has allocated £15m in additional funding to Natural England for this financial year after a decade of cuts that have left England’s wildlife agency “in crisis”.
Natural England’s chairman, Tony Juniper, said the funding marked a “significant change of trend” in the financing of the government body, which has seen its budget slashed by £180m since 2008.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – which sponsors Natural England – allocated the additional funds after positive discussions about the importance of reversing wildlife decline in the UK, Juniper told the Guardian.
“I am hoping later this year we can look to secure the resources we need for ambitious nature recovery across the country for a multi-year period,” he said.
Natural England has a range of responsibilities including monitoring the country’s most important wildlife sites, advising on planning applications and paying farmers to protect wildlife. Defra’s funding for the agency plummeted from £265m in 2008-09 to a low point of £85.6m in 2019-20.
The inadequate funding of the UK’s natural environment departments had a “profound, negative impact on England’s biodiversity”, the House of Lords Select Committee concluded in 2018. This year’s additional funding will take Natural England’s grant-in-aid budget up to around £100m; £4m of the additional money comes from Defra’s £30m biodiversity fund, announced last year.
But critics argue that the extra funding does not go far enough. The conservationist Mark Avery of Wild Justice described the announcement as “a smidgen of good news”.
“Well done, Tony, for getting back a small fraction of the money Defra has hacked out of Natural England over the past decade,” he said.
The Green party peer Natalie Bennett said: “The government must not be allowed to get away with celebrating a measly announcement of an extra £15m grant as any kind of restoration. That’s just 10% of what has been cut since 2009.”
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