Towards A Wilder Britain Creating a Nature Recovery Network to bring back wildlife to every neighbourhood A report for the Westminster Government by The Wildlife Trusts Nature Recovery Network We all The common lizard used to live up to its name. It could need nature do again It’s time to give it the space it needs to be part of all our lives Contents t a time when Britain stands 4 Britain in 2040 on the brink of its biggest It could be healthier, happier and greener – if we take A ever shake-up of the right decisions now environmental rules, The Wildlife Trusts are calling for a wilder, better 6 Britain in 2018 Britain. A lack of joined-up thinking has produced a raft of Most people agree that wildlife social and environmental problems and wild places are valuable for their own sake. We now know from 8 The solution: a Nature Recovery Network research across the globe that a Local networks of places that are good for wildlife, joined healthy, wildlife-rich natural world is together into a national Nature Recovery Network essential for our wellbeing and prosperity. 12 How the network can become reality But wildlife has been getting less A combination of strong new laws, nature maps and a and less common, on land and at change in our national culture to value nature once more sea, for decades. Wild places are The Wildlife Trusts more scarce, smaller and more 14 Pioneer project: the Aire Valley, Yorkshire Tel: 01636 670000 isolated. There is less nature and How a Nature Recovery Network would strengthen the local economy Email: [email protected] Website: wildlifetrusts.org greenery in the places where we @WildlifeTrusts live and work. And not everyone has 16 Pioneer project: the Irish Sea Registered Charity No 207238 equal access to nature or the The principles of a Network applied in the marine environment Contact Us benefits it brings. Dr Sue Young, Nature needs to recover – for the 17 Pioneer project: Lincolnshire’s road verges Head of Land Use Planning and Ecological Networks sake of wild plants and animals, and Six years of surveys show how verges can contribute to the Network [email protected] for everything it brings us: better Cover picture: red kite over a green- health, climate control, flood 18 Pioneer project: Kidbrooke, London roofed London, by Dan Hilliard. Pics: management, enjoyment, A nature-rich development that will build almost 5,000 houses iStock (city), David Chapman (kite), Paul Hobson (heron), Mike Read employment and more. (wigeon flocks). To make this happen, we need to 19 Support our vision This page: Common lizard by Ross change the way we look after our Help us build momentum for an Environment Act Hoddinott land and seas. We need a Nature Recovery Network to put space for nature at the heart of our farming We all want a and planning systems; to bring greener, healthier nature into the places where most 4 future... don’t we? 14 people live their daily lives. We need new laws, including an How it should be: a heron Environment Act passed by the and a human in Regent’s Westminster government, to ensure Park, London this happens. In it, local Nature Recovery Maps would be produced A Nature Recovery Network to achieve key Government targets for increasing the extent and quality is a joined-up network of habitats that allow wildlife and people to thrive: ■ in housing estates ■ on farms of natural habitats, turning nature’s Every child recovery from an aspiration to a ■ ■ ■ Volunteers in nature reserves on road verges along riverbanks deserves a wild making ecological reality. Local Authorities would have ■ in parks and gardens ■ on office roofs ■ in the hills childhood 8 maps of verges LONDON WILDLIFE TRUST LONDON MARK SCHOFIELD NIK POLLARD TERRY WHITTAKER/2020VISION TERRY a requirement to do this. 2 THE WILDLIFE TRUSTS THE WILDLIFE TRUSTS 3 The UK’s Nature Recovery A recovering landscape Network 1 Nature is normal 4 Buzzing creatures which used Britain in 2040 Children grow up with countryside to be common around trees to climb, ponds Farmland is the coasts are to investigate and crisscrossed by increasing. Green, healthy, happy fields to explore. They colourful habitat for its don’t know it, but their most important wild 7 Fertile soils childhood is better residents: pollinators. The most productive A world where seeing a hedgehog is an everyday experience than their parents’. land is renewing itself. 5 Sustainable Nutrients are staying f you could travel forward in walls. Housing estates now come or ponds, or thick hedges. There are 2 Green fisheries put in soils that are time, and visit your home with green arteries, many of them more hedgehogs, swallows and developments After two decades of accumulating rather I town two decades from incorporating old hedgerows and housemartins, and a lot more insects. For 20 years all new protection the UK’s than eroding and today, the last thing you’d expect is trees. Farm fields have colourful Finally, you realise what it is. The housing and other seas have regained blowing away. that people would feel sorry for you. wildflower strips running alongside, people. They simply look healthier development has much of their former It might be hard to work out why and happier, more willing to talk. resulted in a net gain bounty. All fishing is 8 Restored uplands at first. Of course, there are little There’s less stress and anxiety than for wildlife. sustainable and jobs Instead of just close- 8 differences, but each one doesn’t Housing estates there used to be. Children especially are secure. grazed grasslands, the seem that strange on its own. The air seem to understand that the natural 3 Wilder cities trees and peat bogs is cleaner, and the hubbub of vehicle now come with world is the foundation of our Green roofs, green 6 Returning whales are back, reducing noise has almost vanished from the green arteries: wellbeing and prosperity; that we walls, pocket parks Sightings of whales flooding and locking streets. Nearly all buildings seem to depend on it, and it depends on us. and trees are common. and other large sea up CO2 from the air. NIK POLLARD have green roofs, or even green hedges, trees Which is, after all, how it is. 5 6 3 7 2 1 4 4 THE WILDLIFE TRUSTS THE WILDLIFE TRUSTS 5 The UK’s Nature Recovery Britain in 2018 Network Depleted, fragmented, fragile We have torn great holes in the web of life that supports us he UK today is a human- problem in Europe. Air quality limits Sir John Lawton, who led a dominated landscape. Most are regularly breached. Floods are Government review of England’s T original habitats have gone, becoming more common and more wildlife sites, said: “There is and natural ecosystems are destructive. Damage to farmland compelling evidence that they are fragmented. Woods, meadows, soils costs us around £1bn a year. generally too small and too isolated. ponds and other places with lots of For most of us, our material We need more space for nature.” wild plants and animals are getting standard of living is still improving. Conservation work by charities, smaller, fewer, more polluted, and But our lifestyles are unsustainable farmers, community groups and more cut-off from each other. Most and overlook the value of natural individuals shows that wildlife can be Flooding in York, of our plants and animals are systems – even though they brought back when the will and the 2015: Research shows declining. One in ten face extinction. underpin everything we do. We space is there. Previous generations that having more Given the pressure on land for need healthy soil to grow food in, lived with clouds of butterflies, vegetation and trees food, roads and housing, this is not clean air to breathe, clean water to snowstorms of moths, and hedges in the hills can help to surprising. However, our separation drink, and green space for exercise shaking with dense flocks of keep floodwater out of from nature has led to other and relaxation. No one disputes this farmland birds. These are biological IMAGES ANNA GOWTHORPE/PA homes and businesses unintended effects. – yet our farming and planning riches denied to younger people. We have an epidemic of chronic systems have often taken us in the We need to decide what kind of disease, and the worst obesity opposite direction. future we want – wilder, or not? Map of UK Biodiversity Intactness Askham Bog: a familiar tale Tim Newbold; Lawrence N People vs nature: the disconnect Hudson; Andrew P Arnell; Nothing left Sara Contu et al. (2016). to lose? Dataset: Global map of the Biodiversity Intactness Index, This map shows from Newbold et al. (2016) Science. Natural History estimates of Museum Data Portal (data. ‘biodiversity nhm.ac.uk). https://doi. intactness’ across org/10.5519/0009936 Proposed housing the UK. The UK index of 81% is 29th lowest out of 218 Golf course countries assessed. Askham Bog Researchers suggest such biodiversity Ex-landfill Roads Pollution Housing loss might 250,000 miles of tarmac Plastics, pesticides and Every year 36 square miles exceed ‘planetary divide our landscape. To atmospheric pollution are of new developments put boundaries’. A64 trunk road many species they causing problems for pressure on local GOOGLE MAPS are a barrier wildlife ecosystems STEPHEN POWLES STEPHEN TERRY WHITTAKER TERRY MATTHEW ROBERTS MATTHEW Key Golf course Percentage of originally-present An ancient bog on the outskirts of species York, Askham was one of The Wildlife Trusts’ first nature reserves. It is a less than 50% unique place, thousands of years old, and teeming with specialised less than 60% wildlife.