The responses to the readers’ survey (854 of them, although not everyone answered every question) suggest that readers of this blog are not hopeful about the state of British wildlife, think the coalition government is doing a bad or very bad job for the environment and claim that this will influence how they vote.
Last month (January 2014) this blog received 12,926 unique visitors according to Google Analytics.
More results tomorrow and click here for results released yesterday.
[registration_form]
Think there is very little difference between major party’s in regard to record on Environment and lots of things need to be taken into account when considering voting.
I’ve just been reading my draft book, due out in June, and came across the last government’s SSSI target which put real money into conservation – and succeeded in galvanising significant action. What has this Government done that is remotely comparable ?
I know it is difficult to trust any of the major parties with the environment but Rod is right about the boost given to nature conservation when the last government committed so much to restoring SSSIs to favourable condition. It was the best thing ever to get that money and it has been carried over as a commitment by this coalition. The big difference is that the current government has virtually demolished Natural England , they’ve lost their independent voice and their staff are stretched to breaking point, because ,typically this government didn’t understand what they were signing up to. When David Cameron said they would be the greenest government ever he didn’t tell us he was colour blind!
Diana – quite right. And, of course, the CROW Act was the result of hard lobbying by NGOs – the commitments contained in which resulted in the necessity for a system to assess and improve the condition of SSSIs. I bet they aren’t in such good nick these days.