Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Written Evidence


Supplementary memorandum submitted by Butterfly Conservation (DAR 04a)

  Since our main submission in November, details have been provided on several more examples of where budget cuts have affected important conservation work on threatened BAP Priority butterflies and moths in the current financial year:

  1.  The following three projects due to be funded on highly threatened species under the Species Recovery Programme were cancelled:

    —  Marsh Fritillary: monitoring Mid Cornwall Moors LIFE project;

    —  Fiery Clearwing moth: autecology, monitoring and site management; and

    —  Netted Carpet moth: autecology, monitoring and management.

  2.  Most worrying still is the lack of any indication of funding for Species Recovery work for 2007-08 and beyond. This is directly impacting on the relationships which Natural England has with major NGOs, Universities, Research Institutes and specialist consultants, and will impact on their ability to progress the Government approved action plans for species identified to comply with international treaties (Biodiversity Convention, EU Habitats and Species Directive etc). There is now a projected four to five month delay in letting large contracts, which have to go through a laborious European tendering process. Thus essential work scheduled to start at the beginning of the field season in April will need to be tendered in January at the latest. This seems impossible unless tendering starts within the next week (which is unlikely). Thus it seems inevitable that a whole field season will be missed as a result and many projects that need sustained effort will be badly affected. This is especially critical for many projects run by NGOs such as Butterfly Conservation, which rely on volunteer involvement.

  In conclusion, Butterfly Conservation is extremely concerned about the impact of the Defra cuts, and the knock on effects for the coming year. They are having serious impacts on both the delivery of government biodiversity targets and on the volunteer community who are trying to help government meet its own targets to halt biodiversity loss.

  We strongly urge Defra to correct this as soon as possible and to remove the blockages to the efficient and speedy use of resources for the coming year.

Butterfly Conservation

December 2006





 
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