Guardian ‘ Conservation watchdog given boost after decade of funding cuts that left it at ‘crisis point’
Natural England, the government’s conservation watchdog, is to receive a 47% increase in government funding this year as its role expands to support a “green recovery” and provide environmental scrutiny of the government’s controversial “Project Speed”.
The dramatic funding increase is a boost for wildlife protection and monitoring after a decade of deep cuts which left the agency at “crisis point” and its chairman, Tony Juniper, admitting that it would struggle to reverse declines in biodiversity.
Natural England monitors and manages some of the country’s most wildlife-rich places, including sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) and many nature reserves, also providing expert advice on the environmental impact of new homes, roads and other developments. Juniper, the influential former Friends of the Earth campaigner who was appointed chair in 2019, said: “I am delighted to see the government backing nature recovery and giving us more of the tools we need to make a real difference and build back greener from the coronavirus pandemic. Natural England has big ambitions to establish a ‘nature recovery network’ and I believe our renewed focus and remit will help us to achieve this.”
The “nature recovery network,” a vision of landscape-scale restoration that joins up nature-rich places to better enable wild species to move through the countryside, was first mapped out in the government’s 25-year plan for the environment in 2018. After a modest injection of an extra £15m last year, Natural England’s total budget for 2021-22 will rise to £198m, of which 90% is from Defra, plus £2.5m from other government departments and the remainder from fees, charges and external funding. Although a big increase from a low of £85.6m in 2019-20, its budget is still less than the £265m it received in 2008-09.
In its expanded role, Natural England will be a statutory consultee on the government’s “Project Speed” to accelerate infrastructure projects, an aspiration recently branded “an utter disaster” by conservationists.