Page 11 - Wildlife News April 2018
P. 11
Vote for nature
Local elections on 3 May present an opportunity to speak
up for nature, with seats up for election in Cherwell, Milton
Keynes, Oxford, Reading, Slough, West Oxfordshire and
Wokingham.
Your local Wildlife Trust will be speaking up for all local
wildlife and the local environment. We are asking candidates
to make a pledge committing to ensure there are more
natural green spaces for both wildlife and people, with
improvements for biodiversity as part of all new major
developments.
BBOWT is organising a hustings for prospective Cherwell
District councillors at St Edburg’s Church, Bicester on 18 April.
The discussion will include the potential impact on wildlife of
the proposed Oxford-Cambridge Expressway and associated
developments in the Corridor.
For further details, including questions to ask
candidates on the doorstep, via email or in
hustings, visit bbowt.org.uk/vote-for-nature
Volunteers plant trees at Moor Copse, Berkshire. Space for nature: wildflower margins at the
Our role will be to help others lay the groundwork edge of cropland offer food for pollinators
for nature’s recovery. (TONY HOWELLS)
such as this buff-tailed bumblebee.
(CHRIS GOMERSHALL/2020VISION)
View on the farm implemented. At a time when so many species are in steep
decline it is up to us farmers to consider our responsibility
Environment Secretary Michael Gove has clearly talked to a to wildlife and, where we can, work to reverse some of
lot of people who have both farming and wildlife interests those declines.
at heart. He has to listen to the farmer and consider food
production, but at the same time he has realised that Areas that are well managed for wildlife are often of huge
the 25 Year Environment Plan is a golden opportunity to benefit to an existing farming system. Hopefully such an
encourage the farming community to think harder about the approach can be adopted, with more money finding its way to
environmental side to their farms. This can be done across the farmer and less ending up on unnecessary bureaucracy.
the board, rather than targeting the few farmers who are in
existing agri-environment schemes. We owe it to future generations to manage the countryside
in a sustainable way, putting vulnerable species under less
With this in mind Gove is thinking of using financial pressure so that folk can derive pleasure from nature as we,
incentives to achieve his goal. We will only know whether and those who have gone before us, have done.
the Plan goes far enough once any new policies have been
Richard Matthews, Caswell Farm, Oxfordshire
Redirecting subsidies from land ownership to the environment is essential. (IAN BOYD)
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