Monday, January 20, 2025
An alarming decline in Welsh nature
The paper says that Labour ministers have been accused of overseeing “delays, undelivered commitments and missed deadlines” by the Senedd’s cross-party climate change, environment and infrastructure committee, with one in six Welsh species threatened with extinction:
The Welsh parliament committee called on the government to publish firm proposals for how it intended to save nature, saying it currently lacked “a plan, action and investment”.
Conservation organisations who gave evidence to an inquiry set up by the committee said beloved species such as the curlew, which holds a cherished place in Welsh folklore and culture, were in danger because of a lack of effective action.
In June 2021, the Welsh government promised to set legally binding biodiversity targets, but it admitted to the committee that these targets were now unlikely to be set until 2029. The committee said England had already set its targets and Scotland was ahead of Wales in the process.
The committee found that important documents meant to guide the Welsh government’s biodiversity work, such as the natural resources policy (NRP), which sets out priorities and risks, were years out of date. The NRP was published in 2018.
Llŷr Gruffydd, the committee chair, said: “Wales’s nature is disappearing at an alarming rate. After decades of pollution, urbanisation and the impact of climate change, Wales’s nature is in trouble. One in six Welsh species are threatened with extinction.
“The unfortunate reality is that the Welsh government’s numerous plans, strategies and policies have failed to halt this decline. It’s clear that this is because there has been little investment or action to make good on promises.”
The report said the environmental regulator, Natural Resources Wales, was already understaffed – and was planning to shed another 265 jobs because of budget cuts. It said: “Years of under-investment have stretched NRW too thin, and this has clearly limited its ability to lead biodiversity recovery effectively.”
NRW is responsible for monitoring protected sites but the committee said some had not been visited for more than 10 years.
RSPB Cymru welcomed the report, particularly a recommendation that a forthcoming bill should include a headline target to reverse biodiversity loss.
Examples of species it highlighted as being in deep trouble were the swift, whose numbers in Wales were down 76% since 1995. It said Wales had lost more than 90% of its curlews in the last 40 years. The charity said more than half the world’s manx shearwaters breed on Welsh islands, meaning effective plans to protect marine environments were vital.
After twenty five and a half years in charge, one would have thought that Labour might have grasped the problem by now and was in the process of putting in place measures to deal with it. This report says otherwise.
