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New project to increase
land for all
DEFRA press release 560/05, 30 November 2005
Defra has given the go-ahead for £1.2 million in funding to encourage
landowners to voluntarily dedicate land for public access under the
Countryside and Rights of Way Act.
While it is widely understood that there is a statutory right of access on
foot to 935,000 of hectares of mapped open country and common land in
England, it is less well-known that the law also means willing landowners
can voluntarily dedicate their land for public access.
The money will fund a Countryside Agency research project looking at steps
that can be taken, nationally and locally, to promote and encourage
dedication. The three-year project will also investigate landowner
motivations and concerns and secure a number of actual dedications of land
by working with local authorities, landowners, and other local partners.
Mr
Jim Knight, Rural Affairs Minister,
said:
"Dedication can make a real difference to access opportunities in places
where there is little mapped access land, and it can ease the pressure on
land already open to the public.
"Defra
is giving full backing to efforts to encourage more and more organisations
and private landowners to dedicate land for access, which will ultimately
mean more opportunities for people to enjoy a more active lifestyle in our
countryside."
So
far 127,000 hectares have been dedicated by landowners in England. Most of
this land is owned by the Forestry Commission, but a range of other
landowners have dedicated land or are expecting to do so, including
Shropshire County Council, Yorkshire Water Ltd, English Nature, the
Environment Agency, Butterfly Conservation, several golf courses and a
number of private individuals. The RSPB will also consider dedicating land
where targeted dedications will enhance access to wider areas of access
land.
For further information on dedication, including a Guidance Note for
landowners, and an information update on recent dedications, visit the
Defra Website at
www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-countryside/cl/accessopen/accessopen07.htm
Switzerland
(wolf population 3) proposes wolf hunt…
WWF
Press Release, 23 November 2005
The Swiss government has made a proposal to the Council of Europe to allow
the hunting of wolves throughout their European range. The proposal will
be voted on at next week’s meeting of the Bern Convention.
The largest populations of wolves in Europe are in Turkey, Romania,
Bulgaria, Spain, Ukraine, Macedonia and Albania. Wolves were driven to
extinction throughout most of Western Europe by the beginning of the last
century. Conservation efforts have however led to the animals returning to
the European Alps from Italy’s Apennine Mountains.
The wolf finally returned to Switzerland in 1995, and wolf populations are
now slowly expanding in France, Monaco, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein,
Germany, Austria and Slovenia. A recent report says that hunting, poaching
and population control measures are preventing wolf numbers in Europe from
increasing. Even in countries with large numbers of wolves, such as
Slovakia or Bulgaria, little is known about their status.
Livestock predation by wolves is usually very low in Western Europe.
Although wolves are quickly blamed for livestock losses it is thought that
many more sheep are killed by dogs. WWF and its partners are working to
reduce conflict with wolves through a number of measures such as by
helping with the training and introduction of large dog breeds and donkeys
to protect sheep against wolf attacks (France, Italy, Switzerland) and
promoting public awareness to gain support for the presence of large
carnivores (Italy, France, Austria, Germany, Switzerland).
www.wwf.org.uk
Environment Agency States Sea of Concern
EA
press release 118/05, 11 November 2005
The Environment Agency has published it's first State of the Marine
Environment report. The report and a marine strategy were launched by Ben
Bradshaw at the House of Commons on 10 November 2005. It will also be
launched by Carwyn Jones at the National Assembly of Wales on 23 November
2005.
Key findings of our State of the Marine Environment report are:
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80%
of global marine pollution comes from the land and 1 in 4 coastal waters
are at risk from diffuse pollution caused by fertilisers and pesticides
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About one third of all intertidal estuaries, including half of all
saltmarshes, have been lost to land reclamation since Roman times due to
pressure from commercial development and human activities
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Over the past 40 years, warmer seas have forced some marine plants and
animals to move North towards Scandinavia, roughly the length of Britain
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The
estimated costs of damage from coastal and river flooding are currently
about £1 billion a year. The flooding of coastal areas could increase
between 4 and 10 times as a result of climate change unless there is
adequate future investment in flood risk management
Sir John Harman Chairman of the Environment Agency, said “To meet these
challenges we need to strike a much better balance between the different
uses of our coasts and seas to protect the marine environment.”
The Environment Agency supports the Government's commitment to create a
Marine Bill so we can replace today’s piecemeal approach to management of
the seas and coast by introducing:
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a
system of marine spatial planning
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better protection measures for marine biodiversity and fisheries
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clear, allocated responsibilities for managing and regulating activities
in the marine environment
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effective measurements to strengthen the links between the management of
our coasts and seas
The State of the Marine Environment of England and Wales and
Working for a better marine environment - our strategy 2005 - 2011 are
available to download at
www.environment-agency.gov.uk/subjects/conservation/208776/?version=1&lang=_e
Reserves hope for red squirrels
BBC News 9 November 2005
The North of England Red Squirrel Conservation Strategy to save Britain's
native red squirrels from extinction is being launched by Red Alert North
England, which is made up of wildlife trusts, the Forestry Commission and
landowners. The species has been declining since American grey squirrels
were introduced in the 19th Century, spreading illness and out-competing
them for food. Experts say they now out-number reds by 66 to 1.
The £1m strategy will focus on carefully-selected red squirrel reserves in
forests. The woodland areas in Cumbria, Yorkshire, Merseyside and
Northumbria chosen as reserves will be managed to support healthy
populations of red squirrels but will be less well suited to the larger
grey squirrels.
Targeted grey squirrel control will take place in "buffer zones"
surrounding the reserves to protect the reds. Previous efforts to
safeguard red squirrel populations - characterised mainly by ad-hoc
culling of grey squirrels - have proved largely unsuccessful.
Mike Pratt, chief executive of Northumberland Wildlife Trust, said public
interest in an concern for red squirrels was at an all-time high and that
hundreds of thousands of people came to Northumberland hoping to see the
"iconic species" in the wild.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4419914.stm
England's introduced
species revealed
English Nature press release, 9 November 2005
The number of non-native species in England and the impacts they have on
the environment are reported in research commissioned by English Nature.
There are 2,721 non-native species and hybrids in the wild in England,
including 1,798 flowering plants (73 per cent of the total), most of
which have escaped from gardens. Introduced animals occupy a wide
variety of habitats, but plants are more selective, being strongly
concentrated on cultivated, built and derelict land.
The report identifies 19 of the non-native species that have strongly
negative environmental impacts. These include signal crayfish which
carry a disease that kills native crayfish; grey squirrels which
out-compete native red squirrels and carry a disease that kills them;
Chinese mitten crabs - a voracious predator which threatens native
species, and can cause erosion of soft banks in large number; giant
hogweed which has a toxic chemical sap dangerous to humans and
out-competes other native plants and grasses, and Japanese knotweed
which can grow through concrete, damage property and destroy habitats by
swamping the other plants.
The report identified four animals (common pheasant, greylag goose,
red-legged partridge and Rhizophagus grandis a predatory beetle used for
pest biocontrol in forestry) and 51 plants - mainly tree crops and field
crops - that had strongly positive economic impacts.
In the last 20 years some invasive non-native species have increased
considerably, at least doubling their numbers, including the freshwater
fish topmouth gudgeon, Canada goose, Chinese muntjac, New Zealand
pygmyweed and butterfly bush. New species continue to arrive and spread
rapidly, for example the horse chestnut leaf miner, which probably first
appeared in 2002.
Non-native species arrive in the UK through many pathways, including via
shipping, horticulture, agriculture and aquaculture. Some of our
existing invasive non-native species were intentional introductions.
Grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) was introduced to England around
the turn of the twentieth century for aesthetic reasons. Japanese
knotweed (Fallopia japonica) was a highly valued garden plant in the mid
nineteenth century. Other invasives have been unintentionally
introduced, such as Chinese mitten crab (Eriocheir sinensis) and the
Zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha). These were both probably brought in
through ballast water transfer or hull fouling. The New Zealand flatworm
(Arthurdendyus triangulatus) was an unintentional introduction in soil
in which legally imported plants were growing.
English Nature will now use these results to decide which nuisancenon-native
species pose a threat to English wildlife and how they can be tackled.
The English Nature Research Report Number 662 'Audit of non-native
species in England' can be downloaded at:
www.english-nature.org.uk/pubs/publication/PDF/662.pdf
Scotland 'to lead the way in attracting
wilderness tourists'
The Scotsman, 4th November 2005 & PAN Parks
Foundation press release, 3rd November 2005
Delegates and speakers from around the world
converged on Edinburgh on the 3 November 2005 for the fourth PAN Parks
Europe’s Wilderness Days conference. The two-day conference was
organised by the PAN (Protected Area Network) Parks Foundation, a
non-profit organisation, primarily funded by WWF Netherlands. The
organisation aims to increase the effectiveness of protected area
management, and to enhance the image and the recognition of Europe’s
diverse nature.
Zoltan Kun, Executive Director for the PAN
Parks Foundation, said: "The aim of the conference is to bring all of
the stakeholders of Europe’s wilderness areas together – to promote a
comprehensive approach to meet the ecological and social needs of
Europe’s protected areas by balancing wilderness protection with
sustainable tourism and community development. We aim to show that there
can be a positive socio-economic impact from a protected area and that
it is possible to ascribe an economic value to wilderness, which makes
it worth saving for its economic and community benefits, as well as
conservation reasons."
The conference heard speakers from Highlands
and Islands Enterprise, Wild Scotland, the Tourism and Environment Forum
and the Scottish Seabird Centre, who talked about Scotland’s sustainable
tourism successes and the potential for developing further sustainable
tourism projects in Scotland’s wild and protected areas. The potential
is for these to join the European network of protected wilderness areas
in the PAN Parks system. PAN Parks started in 1997 as a WWF project in
Europe, and there are currently eight Certified PAN Parks across Europe
with a minimum size of 10,000 hectares.
Bill Taylor, natural heritage manager with
Highlands and Islands Enterprise is reported in The Scotsman to have
identified the unspoiled Caithness flow country - thousands of hectares
two hours from the nearest road - as one possibility for a PAN Park,
with others being the land bought by the Assynt Community in Wester Ross
and land bought by the crofters of North Harris.
"But we can't call it wilderness in
Scotland," he said. "Visitors might call it that, but the locals get
upset. We would call it wild land."
Heritage and land use experts at the
conference agreed that irrespective of name, the idea of PAN parks could
work in Scotland.
Extracted from:
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=2191492005
http://www.panparks.org/Newsroom/News?page=details&oldal=1&news_id=121
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