An ambitious scheme to restore England\u2019s nature over coming decades has been undermined after the government inserted a clause allowing it to terminate contracts with only a year\u2019s notice, conservationists have said.<\/p>\n
The project was designed to fund landscape-scale restoration over thousands of hectares, whether on large estates or across farms and nature reserves. The idea was to create huge reserves for rare species to thrive \u2013 projects promoted as decades-long commitments to securing habitat for wildlife well into the future.<\/p>\n
Conservationists have warned these changes<\/a>, as well as underfunding, will lead to low take-up and less land protected for nature. They say allowing contracts to be ripped up after a year is unworkable, as it would leave landowners with rewilded land they can no longer farm and too little time to reconvert it.<\/p>\n Landscape recovery is the most ambitious part of the environmental land management schemes (Elms), which were introduced by the previous Conservative government to replace EU farming subsidies.<\/p>\n Initially, the schemes were to be split into three strands, with landscape recovery receiving a third of the \u00a32.4bn a year funding pot. But this week, the environment secretary, Emma Reynolds, announced the projects would be given only \u00a3500m over 20 years.<\/p>\n Jake Fiennes is the director of conservation at the Holkham estate, one of the government\u2019s first<\/a> pilot schemes for landscape recovery in 2022. He has been creating more than 2,000 hectares (4,940 acres) of wildlife-rich habitat along the north Norfolk coast, including restoring wetland that has already attracted thriving bird life such as the return of rare spoonbills.<\/a><\/p>\n On-farm habitat must be \u2018high-quality, the right mix and in the right places\u2019 to support wildlife, says one expert. Photograph: Arterra\/Universal Images Group\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Fiennes said: \u201c\u00a3500m over 20 years is sod all. It was supposed to be a third of the [farming] budget \u2013 we could have worked with that. If you\u2019re the person in the street, \u00a3500m sounds like the most enormous amount of money. But if you understand the environment and food budget is \u00a32.4bn annually, this is a fifth of that over 20 years. A tiny fraction of it for the most ambitious nature schemes.\u201d<\/p>\n Spread across the landscape recovery schemes, it will amount to only a few million pounds a year. But what is being asked of the landowners is incredibly expensive and ambitious, Fiennes says.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of the pilots are asking so much more than that as they understand the value of land, and if you put it into permanent land use change, you permanently remove its value. Then it\u2019s implementing your scheme, like re-meandering a river and completely redesigning a landscape. That costs money,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has claimed the funding shortfall could be topped up with private investment. However, farmers say this is unlikely while schemes remain vulnerable to being scrapped with only a year\u2019s notice.<\/p>\n Tom Bradshaw, the president of the National Farmers\u2019 Union of England and Wales, says attracting private investment has been challenging. Photograph: Graeme Robertson\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The president of the National Farmers\u2019 Union, Tom Bradshaw, said: \u201cDefra\u2019s plans for landscape recovery projects under the [environmental improvement plan<\/a>] involve combining government funding with private investment. However, experience shows that attracting private investment has been challenging, raising concerns about how farmers can confidently engage their businesses in the projects.\u201d<\/p>\n Toby Perkins, the chair of the environmental audit committee, said: \u201cDo the government\u2019s commitments match its ambition? The \u00a3500m for landscape recovery is much needed but, at \u00a325m a year, I am very sceptical that it offers anything like adequate funding.\u201d<\/p>\n The government\u2019s environmental improvement plan, announced this week, has watered down the overall ambition for nature on farmland.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The planet’s most important stories. Get all the week’s environment news – the good, the bad and the essential<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Alice Groom, the head of sustainable land policy at the RSPB, said: \u201cIn just two years, we\u2019ve gone from needing 65\u201380% of farmers to manage 10% of their land for nature, to a new target of just 41% of farmers managing only 7%. That is a huge step backwards.<\/p>\n \u201cThe science is unequivocal: on-farm habitat must be high-quality, the right mix and in the right places to support thriving wildlife populations. Government is simply wrong to suggest that getting 41% of farms to manage 7% of land under almost any [sustainable farming incentive (SFI)] option will be enough. It won\u2019t. And it risks locking in further decline.<\/p>\n \u201cThe falling numbers of species like corn buntings and turtle doves tell us something deeper that pollinators, beneficial insects, soils and climate-resilient landscapes are under stress.\u201d<\/p>\n Farmers and other landowners who signed up to the scheme found that their contracts allowed the government to terminate them for convenience \u2013 with no fault attached \u2013 with just 12 months\u2019 notice.<\/p>\n Fiennes said he would not sign up to the new schemes yet and hoped to renegotiate with the government.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cSome of the legal advice says don\u2019t sign because the government can end the scheme in 12 months. If you\u2019ve done potentially irreversible land use change, you are up a creek without a paddle. Pension funds, banks \u2013 if they know there is a commitment from government for a set period, they will top this up, but at the moment it can be struck off in a year.\u201d<\/p>\n The nature-friendly farming schemes have been beset by difficulties and delays<\/a>. Under the Labour government, funding was cut by \u00a3100m<\/a> and the SFI was abruptly frozen<\/a>, locking farmers out. Ministers say they plan to reopen the SFI in the new year.<\/p>\n A Defra spokesperson said: \u201cThe \u00a3500m for landscape recovery projects is a downpayment which will go a long way to protecting and restoring nature across England.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An ambitious scheme to restore England\u2019s nature over coming decades has been undermined after the government inserted a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-169724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}