PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Wildlife: Nature Conservation (21 July 2021)

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing protections granted to wildlife classified in schedules 5 and 8 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

Asked by:
Fleur Anderson (Labour)

Schedules 5 and 8 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 already provides strong legal protection for all bird species and those animals and plants listed. The Act provides a comprehensive suite of protections against killing, injuring or taking of a protected species as well as disturbing or damaging places they use for shelter.

It is important to ensure that our wider legislative framework for species protection supports our ambitions for nature recovery, including a requirement under the Environment Bill to set a target to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030. That is why, as part of the recently announced Nature Recovery Green Paper, my department will begin a review of species legislation with a view to enhancing and modernising it. We intend to publish the Green Paper and seek views later this year.

Answered by:
Rebecca Pow (Conservative)
10 September 2021