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Nature Improvement Areas welcomed |
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27 Feb 2012, 2:24 PM
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The government's announcement of 12 Nature Improvement Areas (NIAs), intended to restore habitats and create new areas for wildlife today has been welcomed by countryside campaigners CPRE. The establishment of NIAs was a key commitment in 2011’s Natural Environment White Paper, The Natural Choice.
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Ben Stafford, Head of Campaigns at CPRE, said: “This announcement is good news for England’s natural environment. The fact that there were 76 bids for the money to set up these areas shows the enthusiasm for protecting and enhancing nature up and down the country.
“We hope this will be just the start of a process. As well as making a success of these first NIAs, we should all – government, local councils, communities and voluntary groups – look at how we can create many more in the future. Landscape-scale conservation of the natural environment, as recommended by Sir John Lawton in his Making Space for Nature report, will demand ambition, vision and, in the longer term, more resources from government.”
However, CPRE warned that the Government’s ambition for a new approach to protecting nature across England could be undermined if it doesn’t get its planning reforms right.
Ben Stafford concluded:
“If we want to make our countryside as a whole better for nature, NIAs and other protected sites are important, but they are only part of the picture. The bits between these sites matter just as much – no-one wants a landscape of isolated nature sites with degraded countryside in between.
“So it is very worrying that the Government’s proposed national planning policies drop wording that gives countryside outside designated sites such as National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Sites of Special Scientific Interest proper planning protection. Failing to protect this ‘ordinary’ countryside will make the recovery of wildlife and the natural environment harder, not easier. The Government now has a final chance to support its own vision for NIAs by ensuring protection for the undesignated countryside in the final National Planning Policy Framework.”
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