nature

Areas. However, 11 Member States have designated only
half of their marine Important Bird Areas as SPAs.
In response to Commission infraction proceedings against
the UK, consultations on protected areas for the harbour
porpoise are currently underway in Wales and Scotland
and anticipated for England in the near future.
The incompleteness of the offshore network has
caused difficulties for important industries like the
offshore renewables industry, which is forced to plan
on the basis of inadequate information. This means
that survey work often has to begin from scratch
to inform a planning application. In some cases,
wildlife found in this way is of such significance that
designation is necessary and plans are disrupted,
as was the case for the London Array windfarm
development. Completing the network of Natura
2000 sites should be a conservation and
economic imperative.
5. Join the dots: landscape-scale conservation
Both Directives encourage Member States to take
measures outside Natura 2000 to improve the wider
landscape and ensure that the Natura network is not a
patchwork of isolated reserves, but part of a wider,
healthy ecosystem.
Specifically, Article 4(4) of the Birds Directive requires
Member States to strive to avoid the pollution or
deterioration of habitats outside SPAs. Article 10 of the
Habitats Directive urges Member States to use land use
planning and development policies to encourage the
management of features of the landscape which are of
major importance for wild fauna and flora.
In 2010, a review led by Professor Sir John Lawton
concluded that there were serious shortcomings in the
network of wildlife sites: “many of England’s wildlife
sites are too small” and “important wildlife habitats are
generally insufficiently protected and undermanaged”.
Lawton concluded that “we need to take steps to
rebuild nature” and summarised the need for a coherent
ecological network with four themes: “more, bigger, better
and joined-up”.
The Lawton Review proposed “Ecological Restoration
Zones” to provide a spatial and strategic mechanism
for targeting effort and resources on areas of nature
most in need of improvement and enhancement. The
Government has experimented with this approach through
its Nature Improvement Areas. Individual NIAs are making
a difference: in the first year, just £7.5 million helped to
leverage an additional £40 million in both cash and in kind
contributions. However, the NIA approach failed to identify
these areas in a strategic manner, or to embed them in
planning or other decision-making processes. They were
allocated based on local commitment and readiness to
act, rather than ecological need. As an intervention, they
were not designed as a nationally strategic tool to focus
resources on where nature or people needed them most.
Alongside completion of the Natura 2000 network,
Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)
Measures are needed to improve the wider landscape outside Natura 2000 sites.
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