In an article in today’s Guardian, Michael Gove writes ‘While there is still uncertainty in the science, it is increasingly pointing in one direction. Not to act would be to risk continuing down a course which could have extensive and permanent effects on bee populations. That is not a risk I am prepared to take, so the UK will be supporting further restrictions on neonicotinoids. Unless the evidence base changes again, the government will keep these restrictions in place after we have left the EU.’.
This change in position, described as being in response to growing evidence (and there has been growing evidence, but there has been good evidence for quite a while) has been welcomed by environmental campaigners such as FoE and Buglife (and rightly so).
This is not a small thing, it’s a big thing, and it’s not a thing that we would have seen from Leadsom, Truss or most definitely Paterson.
Let us hope there are more things in the Gove bag of presents on the run-up to Christmas.
[registration_form]
wow! What’s that song: ‘I believe in miracles…..’
Well done in a sense although, it could have been done some years ago. Can we have something done for the raptors in our uplands now perhaps!
Especially the last sentence, which, hopefully, also includes other wildlife we could mention!
He has also done something very pleasing to friends of Beavers in the Forest of Dean.
Amazing, so far. Good old Gove.
No doubt the NFU and the ag-chem industry will be lobbying hard to get him to change his mind. Let’s hope he sticks to his guns.
Intrigued to see a Swarowski rifle sight advertised in the side bar to this blog this morning. Think they are targeting (ahem) the wrong market! Evidence that AI still has a way to go before it can match human insights.
I often get adverts for XXXL clothing down the right hand side and also for Russian female “models “. Certainly nothing to do with my browsing history. Mark what have you been up to ?
Hhmmmm! Good to see, but having tried to work through Gove’s ‘leadership’ of education as a Grammar school science teacher I am reminded of a saying regarding ‘leopards and spots’. As a cynic born of a really cynical father, I also recall his advice: “If your enemy suddenly starts being nice to you, look for what he will gain from it”.
We shall see……
I very much hope he does gain from doing the right thing. And then does another right thing, and another, and gains from each of them. And makes Labour wonder about a few Right Things they could do to win votes too, and start a competition between them and the Tories for the best policies that will help them win elections and personal advancement.
We desperately need the traditional environment (ie climate change aside) to be taken seriously and fought over by parties seeking to win votes. As long as all parties continue to essentially ignore it nothing will change.
So I think its vital that Gove does gain. Maybe he is the right man to take the risk of trying something new rather than same old pandering to vested interests, because if he doesn’t make a good go of this job it’ll be his last. Unlike his recent predecessors, he cannot afford to be the NFU’s puppet, he needs his time as Environment Secretary to be seen to be successful and different. I was as cynical as the rest of us when he was appointed, but so far, so good – I want to see him deliver more of what he said he would, and if his motivations include rescuing his career that’s fine by me. I work for a cause but I like to get paid too – nothing wrong with that.
A recent paper (September 2017) may have influenced Mr Gove. It makes the case that better regulation is needed to control how pesticides are used – this is an important measure that has been rather overlooked since the Pesticide Regulations of 1986, where, IIRC, the first regulation stated that pesticides were to be used as a method of last resort. Prophylactic use at a landscape scale turned that on its head.
Toward pesticidovigilance. Alice M. Milner and Ian L. Boyd, Science 357 (6357), 1232-1234.
I am beginning to like this Tory Minister, I just hope common sense not politics dictates his actions. Perhaps it may be possible to take Mr Gove on to a few red grouse moors and show him the reality of what shooting grouse has done to our so called ‘protected’ raptors?
Transparent manoeuvring to seem like a “Good Guy” so he can replace Theresa May hen the wheels finally come off her wagon, if you ask me. It is low hanging fruit as far as policies go. Lets see him bite the bullet on one of the biggies, like ending subsidies to upland farmers, banning leadshot, licensing shooting, enacting some serious sanctions on farmers who let diffuse pollution into our rivers or bringing those foxhunts into line.
“Banning” neonics is just him reading the writing on the wall, they are already on their way out.
Random22 – that’s a point of view but not one I share. I’d put this in the big league of decisions along with some but not all of the ones you mention.
Well done Mr. Gove. ……. but:-
“Environmentalists may win this battle (neonicotinoids), but they are losing the war, and wildlife is steadily paying the price. Until we fundamentally change the system for testing and approving new chemicals, and for advising farmers, how long will it be before something worse comes along? ……half a century on from ‘Silent Spring’, we don’t seem to have learned any lessons at all.”
From: “A Buzz in the Meadow” David Goulson. Jonathan Cape, London
Yes, regulation not self-regulation.
It’s a very similar situation to raptor persecution except environmental pollution is mostly legal. Even polluting farmers get away with a slap on the wrist and some farms aren’t re-visited by the inspectors because it is too dangerous.
On Mull there is a fight to keep neonics out of the forests (community owned). All the written expert advice is pretty good; environment and social issues have priority but these guidelines are completely ignored in the field even within the various branches of Forestry Commission Scotland and Scottish EPA etc and especially the forest agents. The leading forest company even has a Managing Director who is also the Forestry Commissioner for Scotland. And that apparently is legal!
Letters to Roseanna Cunningham (Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform and long names) come back with replies from FCS.
A piece of good news for a change, (good news is like gold dust these days). As you say Mark there is no way Leadsom or Truss would have come up with this decision they were prepared to see our wildlife “ driven into the ground “.
Judge people by their actions, and not by their labels. As far as environmental protection is concerned, I have experienced the strongest opposition from Lib Dem and Labour Councillors, but support from a Tory MP. The Lib Dem and Labour opposition were sufficient in number to defeat those other Lib Dem, Green and Labour Councillors who supported me.
And what did those Lib Dem and Labour Councillors do? They overthrew the environmental protection afforded by the Inspector from two Public Inquiries, and as endorsed by a Tory Secretary of State.