West Midlands losing key species as UK wildlife disappears
All of England’s reptile species and our dolphin and whales are in decline, he said, along with 60% of amphibians, 40% of freshwater fish, 40% of land mammals, a third of butterflies and bees and around a quarter of breeding birds and vascular plants.
“This suggests the extinctions we have recorded could turn out to be the tip of the iceberg unless we take action.”
Dr Tew suggested funding for conservation should rise from current levels of £8-18 million up to £800 million.
Large areas of habitat should be created, and linked up, to provide space for wildlife and and knock-on benefits to society.
He said: “You don’t need to be an ‘ologist’ to understand that when we lose our wildlife we lose something precious that reduces our quality of life.
“Every species has a role, like the rivets in an aeroplane or bricks in a dam, and the overall structure of the environment is weakened when you lose a species.”
He said a healthy, natural environment was necessary to provide important services such as clean air and water, floodwater and carbon storage and productive land for growing food.
And he warned that allowing species to become extinct could push whole ecosystems to “tipping points” where the quality of the environment becomes degraded.
“With those rivets in an aeroplane, you could take out 100 and the plane will keep flying, but the next one that pops out could be the one holding the propeller on and then you’re in trouble,” he said.
Natural England’s chief executive Helen Phillips said that despite other pressures on the land - such as the need to produce more food - looking after the environment was necessary to proving natural resources and food security in the future.
She said the amount of land managed in agri-environment schemes had risen from 45% to 70% in the past few years, and the recently-launched voluntary Campaign for the Farmed Environment showed farmers’ willingness to look after the countryside.
And she said: “We need a step-change in conservation that goes beyond the targeted work that has gone on to protect individual sites and species, and which focuses on restoring the health of ecosystems across entire landscapes.
“We have to give wildlife and habitats more room to thrive and only by tackling the problems of environmental decline in this co-ordinated way, and at this sort of scale, can we succeed in halting and ultimately reversing many of the recent declines in biodiversity,” she said.
