Last week, the latest UK Biodiversity Indicators were published. Did you see the government press release about them? Did you hear Defra ministers quizzed about them on every news bulletin through the day?
Some biodiveristy indices are going up despite the general loss of wildlife in our lives. There are more plants ‘protected’ in seed banks now;
And native breeds are now more numerous too;
And there are more invasive non-native species milling around these days too;
Overall, it is of course, a mixed bag. And that’s why these indicators should be published annually so that we can have a glance at what is going well and what is not going so well. But there’s only a certain point in publishing them if they generate a discussion, in public, and hopefully in the media and in politics.
It seems to me that the lack of examination of these indicators is a sad reflection of th fact that apparently no-on is interested in what is going well and badly in the biodiversity world. government isn’t bragging about its achievements, NGOs aren’t pointing any fingers, the Opposition is probably worried about how they might look if they ever get a go at being in charge of them and the media haven’t really got many environment correspondents who are going to spend the time actually figuring out what a graph means. Poor show everyone, poor show.
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Agreed
I have two examples of the kind of nonsense you get from politicians
One a long time ago was a Tory minister justifying the destruction of an SSSI by some kind of development by saying they were going to make some other area into an SSSI to make up for it.
The other was Mary Creagh – at the time I think shadow environment something or other – when Ash die back was briefly in the news trying to pin it on the current Government – and then as far as I am aware never mentioning it again.
Just did a search on the document for “Fungi” and “Lichen”
= zero mentions
To bang on the same old drum yet again (sorry can’t help it!) – hardly surprising we have more non native invasive species milling about when already known invasives such as snowberry and cherry laurel (I’ve spent well over a hundred hours clearing the latter from a local wood) are still being sold and planted out as game cover. This is scandalous and really needs to be made public by the RSPB, Wildlife Trusts etc. When millions of pounds and many thousands of volunteer hours are being invested in trying to clear existing infestations (for that’s what they really are) it’s ludicrous and disgusting the shooting fraternity can not only get away with this, but also claim they are the ‘real conservationists’. I’d love to see Botham try to justify this to us Islington setters – https://www.ashridgetrees.co.uk/nature-mix
Trouble is that ‘biodiversity’, though critically important, has become a bit of a turn-off term for most people including journalists.
It would be very difficult for even the most gifted of Fleet Street scribes to write a punchy, readable story based on the material – text and graphs – as presented in the report.
What would the headline be?
A heck of a lot of work must have been put into carrying out and collating the research, but, alas, it will be little read and quickly forgotten.
James – you must be very young. Even the least gifted of environmental journalists could make a story out of this 10-15 years ago. It’s really not very difficult.