Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160
- 163)
TUESDAY 23 MAY 2000
DR MARK
AVERY, MR
GWYN WILLIAMS
AND MR
ROBIN WYNDE
160. What do you think would the single most
radical realistic step that Government should take to improve
biodiversity conservation in the United Kingdom?
(Dr Avery) Are we really only allowed one? I would
rather have three and do them very quickly.
Chairman
161. Be greedy and quick.
(Dr Avery) The first one, which is very possible in
the short term, is legal underpinning of the BAP process. There
are discussions going on along the corridor about that at the
moment. The next one would be, as in your report on the Rural
White Paper, modulation, a big shift from production subsidies
to environmental payments that will benefit farmers and wildlife
alike, and the third one would be this major programme of increasing
the area of habitats like lowland heathland, chalk grassland,
open areas that people can enjoy and where biodiversity can prosper.
Mr Olner
162. Give me number one out of those three.
(Dr Avery) We would like to see legislative underpinning
of the BAP because that is the one that can be delivered most
quickly to us and we will continue to work on the other two for
as long as it takes to get them.
Chairman
163. Is there any logic in your vision of what
the countryside should look like? It seems to me that you are
harking back to some supposedly golden age of farming when lots
of farmland birds were about. If we went back a couple of centuries
earlier we would have a totally different snapshot of the United
Kingdom. Why is one more logical than the other?
(Dr Avery) I do not think one is more logical than
the other. One is more achievable than the other. It is rather
unfair to paint wishing to see a stop to the rapid decline of
the lapwing, which, as I say, has halved in the last 10 years,
as harking back to some golden era. This is just 10 or 11 years
ago when we had twice as many lapwings in England and Wales as
we have now. We could have those numbers again in the next five
to 10 years without it costing a rich country like the United
Kingdom anything. We would not notice it in our taxes, we would
not notice it in the amount of money we have to spend, but we
would notice it in the quality of life that we have.
Mrs Dunwoody: You are offering all sorts of
bait there. I think you had better go.
Chairman: I think we had better watch the time.
I am going to restrain myself and the Committee. Thank you very
much for your evidence.
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