Upcoming General Election will make 2024 a defining year for nature’s recovery

A LOCAL nature charity has published a list of priorities for all would-be MPs to sign up to ahead of the forthcoming General Election, as it fights to put nature at the heart of the campaign.

Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) is calling on local voters to ask their candidates to share the targets – bringing back lost wildlife, ending river pollution, funding wildlife-friendly farming, enabling healthy communities and tackling climate change.

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

The upcoming 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.

Chief executive of BBOWT Estelle Bailey said: “We are facing a nature and climate crisis the likes of which we have never seen.

“We are already seeing the effects of climate change on mammals, birds, butterflies and plants at the nature reserves that we manage for wildlife in these three counties.

“What happens at the General 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.”

BBOWT is already demonstrating how local action can help the climate crisis:

Bring back UK’s lost wildlife

The population of water voles in the UK has declined by 90 per cent since the 1970s, but BBOWT’s Water Vole Recovery Project has helped increase the local range by more than 50 per cent over the past 15 years.

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, but they are under threat of having sewage pumped in.

Last year BBOWT joined a Wildlife Trust campaign calling on the Government to create protections for these habitats.

Fund wildlife-friendly

farming

Industrial agriculture has caused huge damage to UK wildlife by replacing mixed habitat with vast monoculture crops, killing animals with pesticides and leaking fertilisers into the environment.

BBOWT works with farmers who prove that wildlife-friendly farming is profitable.

Enable healthy communities

Spending time in nature has been shown to help lower blood pressure and ease anxiety, but growing numbers of people are disconnected from nature.

BBOWT works with urban communities to help people and nature thrive together.

Tackle the climate

emergency

BBOWT recently completed a £2m project at its Chimney Meadows Nature Reserve in Oxfordshire, digging a new channel of the River Thames that has created an enhanced floodplain habitat.

These fields store more floodwater, reducing the risk of damage to towns downstream.

Find out more at bbowt.org.uk/nature-recovery- fund