‘We have a long way to go’: can the UK hit its ambitious 30% rewilding targets?

ore than 5 million tonnes of coal were hewn from land at West Chevington in Northumberland in the 1980s. Lorries, cranes and bulldozers crisscrossed the vast opencast mine that had been created there, flinging clouds of coal dust into the air and brutalising the landscape to provide fuel for the nation’s power stations and factories.

The West Chevington rewilding – which has £2m of funding donated by the Reece Foundation – is one of the biggest land restorations in the UK in recent years and is designed to make a key contribution in bringing the nation’s wild places back to their former glory and helping to protect our endangered wild animals.

Without a target to improve our protected sites, the government has little hope of achieving its commitmentBetween 1970 and 2013, there was a decline in 56% of wildlife species in the UK Harvest mouse: one of the species that conservationists hope to see in the West Chevington rewilding area.The rate of increase in areas of well-protected, well-managed wild land comes to a mere 0.22% in a year and indicates that Britain is going to fall far short of its 30% target in eight years’ time. “It is gloomy,” admitted Richard Benwell, chief executive of the Wildlife and Countryside Link, a group of 67 UK organisations with conservation interests.

However, this prospect was dashed by the government last week, when it refused to tackle the issue with the publication of habitat protection targets for its environment bill. There will be no target for improving the condition of protected nature areas. “This was a great disappointment,” said Benwell. “The government has not listened to consultations and recognised that habitat targets are vital.

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