Let's get nature's recovery back on track

“These woeful figures should be ringing alarm bells loud and clear in everyone’s ear,” says Rewilding Britain’s Chief Executive Rebecca Wrigley. ​“The time for urgent action is definitively here and in rewilding lies a powerful solution. We need an ambitious and credible delivery action plan for landscape scale restoration with rewilding at its heart.”

The story is similar across all three British nations, shows the data, collected on the condition of Sites of Special Scientific Interest across the UK. In England, just 2.83% of land is effectively protected and well managed for nature (down from 2.93% last year); in Wales a mere 2.4% and in Scotland only 12.63%. 

As for our seas, although 38% of UK waters are designated as Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), many are exposed to damaging activities including bottom trawling, offshore energy development, pollution, dredging, and cable laying.

Achieving the 30by30 target is critical to tackling both the climate and nature crises. And it’s what the UK government signed up to at COP15 in 2022, as part of the international Global Biodiversity Framework. So the numbers do matter. 

This immensely helpful report, published annually by WCL — of which Rewilding Britain is a member — paints a picture of nature recovery blocked by similar problems across all UK nations, including:

• Slow expansion of protected networks – the pace of adding new protected areas remains far too slow.
• Poor condition of designated sites – many protected areas are still damaged or degraded due to insufficient or inappropriate management.
• Harmful activities continue – destructive practices are still allowed in some of our most important places for wildlife, including Marine Protected Areas. 
• Lack of monitoring – Governments often don’t have the data they need to track biodiversity or plan recovery. 

We need big, joined-up change if we want to bring nature back across Britain. Rewilding Britain is calling on the UK Government to:

1. Ensure that rewilding is part of the new Land Use Framework for Britain, to which we comprehensively inputted and 6,000 of our supporters backed by sending a message to government.
2. Make nature recovery the primary purpose of our national parks, transforming them into the paragon of thriving nature they should be.
3. Rapidly scale up the restoration of our woodlands, peatlands and coastal and river habitats in delivery and investment. 

It’s only by creating wilder, more natural landscapes at their core can we have any hope of meeting 30 by 30 whilst delivering sustained benefits to our economy and to the wellbeing of ourselves and our communities. 

Finding a way forward

That’s why tomorrow we’re taking part in Wild Summit, a new one-day nature conference hosted by WCL, which focuses on the solutions needed for the UK to meet its species recovery targets and its commitment to restore 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030.

Together we hope to set a bold agenda for nature recovery, showcase the strength of our movement and inspire political leaders to take decisive action on the environment. Rewilding Britain is hosting a live rewilding mission to help generate breakthrough ideas for how to mainstream rewilding into land and sea management across Britain — and to help get nature recovery back on track!