UK may have failed to protect wild birds with environmental laws, watchdog finds | Environment

The government may have failed to protect critical land bird groups by neglecting the implementation of the environmental law properly.

The numbers of wild birds decrease throughout the United Kingdom. During the European Union era, certain parts of the landscape in Britain were appointed specially protected areas when the UK was still a member state. They include the estuary of rivers, coastal areas, and peat lands, as well as wetland areas where birds live in going through, and birds are placed preferred to nest.

However, according to the Environmental Protection Office (OEP), the government has failed to ensure adequate protection of these areas and as a result, wild bird groups decrease.

The ministers now pass the planning and infrastructure bill, which would spread these areas specially protected and place more than 5000 of the most sensitive, rare and protected habitats At a high risk of development, according to the guardianship analysis.

OEP was created after Britain’s exit from the European Union to hold the government accountable according to Environmental Law 2021That was transferred to Replace the European Union Law. I have sent information notifications to the government, and they were given issues and granted them two months to respond.

“The government has a legal commitment to preserving the population from wild birds and ensuring that they have adequate habitats. One of the ways they are doing is through special protection areas, which are legally specific sites that protect rare and threatening wild birds,” Helen Fein, the chief organizational official of OEP.

She added that the government seemed not to meet its binding plans and its goals to stop and reflect the low abundance of species. Modern government data This was generally shown, the types of birds in the number decreased in the United Kingdom by 2 % and in England by 7 % in the five years since 2018. The worse is birds of agricultural lands, which decreased in the number severely-61 % in the long term (since 1970) and 9 % in the short term (for a period of five years between 2018 and 2023)-and the forests whose numbers were about 35 % in the term Long.

“However, wild bird groups continue to decline through England … Our investigation has found what we believe is a possible failure to comply with the environmental law related to the protection of wild birds, and thus we decided to move to the next step in our enforcement process, which is the issuance of information notifications that define our results.”

A DEFRA spokesman said: “Britain is a proud nation of nature lovers, and we are taking bold measures to reflect decades of decline. This includes 13 million pounds to improve our protected sites and a better strategic approach to restore local species and habitats.

“We will continue to work constructively with OEP while they support this investigation.”