Plans for new UK national parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty
The Government has pledged £80 million to improve access to nature and better protect the country’s wildlife.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has committed the Government to creating new national parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) as part of its plan to increase the area of England protected for nature to 30 per cent by 2030.
The announcement late last year was part of a 10-point plan to “kickstart the nation’s green recovery”, which also included £80 million for habitat restoration, environmental education and tree-planting. The Government has yet to decide where the new designated areas will be, but a report published in 2018 identified some current AONB as meriting elevation to national park status – the Chilterns, the Cotswolds and a combined area of East Devon and South Dorset.
The Landscapes Review also highlighted the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, the Sandstone Ridge in Cheshire, the Churnet Valley in Staffordshire and the Vale of Belvoir as deserving AONB status.
But conservation groups say that creating new national parks won’t reverse Britain’s wildlife declines.
“The Government seems to believe that there is more land protected for nature than is the case,” says The Wildlife Trusts public affairs officer Lucy Pegg. “National parks and AONB are not wildlife designations.”
In fact, says Pegg, less than 5 per cent of the UK is actually protected and in good condition. That’s why the Trusts have called for a new nature classification called ‘Wildbelt’, which would enable lands of low biodiversity value to be identified as places to be restored for wildlife.
In 2018, a group of scientists – including a number from Natural England and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, both agencies under the direction of Defra – called for more “high-quality seminatural habitat” to be created in national parks and AONB.
Their research, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, also found that creating 500,000ha of new, high-quality wildlife habitat, as the Government has pledged to do in the 25-Year Environment Plan, would take the total area to about 2.25 million hectares, 17 per cent of England, and “would make a significant contribution to establishing a resilient network”.
It falls, however, well short of Boris Johnson’s stated figure of 30 per cent.
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The Landscapes Review: bit.ly/2N2iF0r
A new nature classification would enable lands of low biodiversity value to be identified as places to be restored for wildlife.