{"id":4656,"date":"2013-07-24T10:04:24","date_gmt":"2013-07-24T09:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/soapboxscience\/?p=4656"},"modified":"2013-07-24T10:24:49","modified_gmt":"2013-07-24T09:24:49","slug":"give-conservation-a-sporting-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/soapboxscience\/2013\/07\/24\/give-conservation-a-sporting-chance","title":{"rendered":"Give conservation a sporting chance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Reading<\/a>Alastair Driver, Environment Agency National Biodiversity Manager, has the honour of inclusion in Who\u2019s Who for \u201cdistinction and influence\u201d in the field of environmental conservation. He is one of the most experienced river and wetland conservationists in the UK, with a growing international reputation in the field of catchment management.<\/i>
\n<\/b>
\nIf you\u2019d told me 35 years ago, after I\u2019d scraped through beer-and-sport-fuelled university with an ecology degree, that I was going to make a living out of conservation, I\u2019d have suggested you should be sectioned. But the fact is that there are now literally thousands of people out there who are professionally employed in conserving and restoring our still beautiful, but quietly ailing natural environment. In fact, there are 200 of them in the Environment Agency alone.<\/p>\n

Back in the late 70s when I was cutting my teeth on wildlife surveys, I remember my rugby mates expressing indignance that their taxes were paying for me to \u201ccount grass\u201d and suggesting that I had \u201ca girl\u2019s job.\u201d Nowadays \u2018the bloke down the pub\u2019 instantly recognises that people like me have a role in society which is both interesting and valuable.<\/p>\n

The question is – are we conservationists really making any difference? The simple answer to that is \u2013 yes, but just as the environment has suffered near-death by a thousand cuts, so it requires healing by a thousand operations, and that takes time. You can\u2019t spend 200 years damaging the environment and then expect to put it right in the blink of a government.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where it gets tricky, because it is only through long-term sustained efforts on the ground that we will turn things around. Those efforts need to be\u00a0delivered by a mix of professional experts and world class armies of UK NGO- inspired volunteers and backed up by continually improving legislation and policy. We are getting there; in the 30 years I\u2019ve worked at the Environment Agency, I have seen amazing changes in both attitudes and action \u2013 changes that were beyond all my expectations. I would never have predicted that we would create as much as 5,000 hectares of new wildlife habitat in the last 10 years, nor that otters would be back in every county in England. \u00a0Nor that we would have a truly world class piece of legislation (the European Water Framework Directive <\/a>) that requires us to get all of our rivers, streams, lakes and estuaries into good condition by 2026.<\/p>\n

Despite all of these achievements, the key message that the environmental community has yet to embed in wider society, is that we need a healthy environment to sustain a healthy economy. The problem in getting that message across is that, as the National Ecosystem Assessment <\/a>demonstrates, you can\u2019t get away with milking the environment for every penny in the short term and not suffer the consequences in the long term. What we need now is to be brave and to commit to long term strategies for environmental improvement. We mustn’t be distracted by economic recession from tackling the single biggest challenge facing our country \u2013 the balancing of a healthy environment with a healthy economy in the face of population expansion and climate change.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, it\u2019s never a dull moment back here in the Environment Agency – we have mega coastal realignment schemes underway at places like Steart Peninsula in Somerset and Medmerry in Sussex. These will deliver fantastic new habitats for wildlife whilst reducing the risk of coastal flooding. We\u2019ve also just launched the Challenges and Choices consultation <\/a>for the second round of River Basin Plans. This is your chance to tell us about the problems facing the water environment near you and offer us thoughts on solutions.<\/p>\n

We have a wonderfully biodiverse planet to save, and everyone has a part to play in that ambition \u2013 but one thing\u2019s for sure though, it\u2019s a marathon not a sprint.<\/p>\n

You can find out more about the biodiversity work of Alastair Driver<\/a> and his Environment Agency colleagues on Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Medmerry<\/a>

Medmerry Flood Defence<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alastair Driver, Environment Agency National Biodiversity Manager, has the honour of inclusion in Who\u2019s Who for \u201cdistinction and influence\u201d in the field of environmental conservation. He is one of the most experienced river and wetland conservationists in the UK, with a growing international reputation in the field of catchment management. If you\u2019d told me 35 years ago, after I\u2019d scraped through beer-and-sport-fuelled university with an ecology degree, that I was going to make a living out of conservation, I\u2019d have suggested you should be sectioned. But the fact is that there are now literally thousands of people out there who are professionally employed in conserving and restoring our still beautiful, but quietly ailing natural environment. In fact, there are 200 of them in the Environment Agency alone.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-around-the-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/soapboxscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/soapboxscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/soapboxscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/soapboxscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/soapboxscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/soapboxscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/soapboxscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/soapboxscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/soapboxscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}