The UK is failing to meet its international obligations to protect its most important wildlife sites and vulnerable species, and now lags behind most other EU countries on key criteria, according to figures posted online by the European Environment Agency.
Under the EU’s habitats and birds, member states commit to improve the physical protection of individual specimens and the conservation of core breeding and resting sites for rare and threatened species.
The EU also sets rules regarding animal welfare and works with the international community to fight illegal wildlife trade.
Member states have to report every six years on progress. But the draft figures for the UK for 2013 to last year show it faring worse than many other member states and making no progress on key measures.
During the period, the draft data show 82 percent of the UK’s designated habitats to be in “bad” or “poor” condition, unchanged from the last reporting period of 2007 to 2012.
The percentage in a “bad” state was 71 percent, compared with 36 percent in Germany and 32 percent in France.
The report also shows 64 percent of species assessed as being in either “bad, “poor” or “unknown” condition, up from 57 percent in 2007 to 2012.
“It turns out that systematically under-funding agencies that protect and restore nature in the UK was a mistake,” said Kierra Box, a Friends of the Earth campaigner. “If we cannot trust our government to abide by shared laws that protect biodiversity as a member of the EU, how can we trust them to make good on promises of ambitious environmental laws after Brexit?”
“Knowing all this, how can a government committed to global biodiversity and the climate emergency leave the EU without a dramatic increase in the funding of environmental monitoring and restoration, and the establishment of a strong, independent environmental watchdog?” she said. “The UK government should be ashamed of these figures and rapidly commit to adopt EU environmental standards with a view to making them stronger.”
If the UK leaves as planned on Oct. 31, although the nature directives will have been written into the UK statute book, environmental organizations said there will be no means to ensure their implementation.
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