The state of nature

There’s a soundbite doing the rounds that’s been repeated so often that many believe it to be a simple, straightforward fact, akin to 1 + 1 = 2: ‘The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world’. Everyone seems to adhere to it, even those whom I greatly respect, but I respect my instincts even more.

Firstly, it sounds just too awful to be true, so it probably is. Secondly, I’ve always ‘felt’ that the UK isn’t as bad as the US, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany, to name a few nations where I’ve observed (but not studied, I admit) their birdlife, buglife, fauna and flora. Every now and again, I’d ask the most vociferous of the soundbite’s parroters what was meant by ‘nature’ and ‘nature-depleted’ and how was it measured. But no one ever told me. Which made me suspicious.

I went hunting and easily found the source of the soundbite. Entitled State of Nature, it’s “The most comprehensive report on the UK’s current biodiversity [that] uses the latest and best data from biological monitoring and recording schemes, collated by the incredible work of thousands of skilled people, most of whom are volunteers, to provide a benchmark for the status of our wildlife.” 

The report focuses on recent changes in biodiversity and admits, “It is challenging to measure [nature] depletion precisely.” It settled on a methodology examining vascular plants, marine fisheries and the ‘Biodiversity Intactness Index’ (BII). The BII aims to “estimate the proportion of species still present in an area and their abundance, despite human impacts.” This involves comparing species abundance across different levels of land-use intensity to indicate species diversity and abundance at near-undisturbed sites compared to similar areas with high human activity. According to BII, the UK has just 53% of its ‘original nature’ left intact and is in the bottom 10% of global nations.

However, as pointed out by the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, this one metric only focusses on biodiversity depletion by human activity. They compare the findings with alternative metrics within the Environmental Performance Index produced by Yale University. Rather than estimate the area of the UK that is ‘natural’, Yale uses indices based on habitat intactness that puts the UK at 43rd out of 152. Overall for biodiversity, the UK ranks 23rd out of 180. From bottom to top quartile because of a different but equally valid methodology? Hmm.

The GWCT further thought-provokes with: has the UK’s naturally occurring biodiversity, i.e. that which Mother Nature intended without human ‘progress’, reduced over time or simply evolved? They cite the example of rabbits and hares not being indigenous to the UK; the Romans imported them. In addition, over the centuries, the UK has literally slashed and burned our nation's tree cover, which has resulted in a different landscape that attracts different and more species. Is that overall a good or a bad thing?

The GWCT concludes that the UK is nature-depleted as measured by the BII, but the chosen metric and resultant nature-depleted message “suits those who demand substantial public investment in nature recovery projects, such as the rewilding and repurposing of 25% of our land for nature, which will reduce our ability to feed our current and future population.”

Yes I know, I know. The GWCT would say that wouldn’t they. If you want to challenge their facts and reasoning, please do so and I’ll reconsider. Until then, I’m concluding that the State of Nature partners paint the bleakest possible simplistic picture of UK nature because it suits their raison d'être but leads to bad policy decisions and misallocated resources, to the detriment of … nature and biodiversity. Their report and promoted shallow soundbite is not the whole truth by a long stretch, which means that people are being deliberately misled as to the complexity and reality of the issue in the UK and globally, which is a polite way of saying it’s a bare-faced lie. Those who repeat the soundbite unquestioningly, lazily, ignorantly, are equally as guilty.

I’m not denying that the UK needs to do more to protect, enhance and reintroduce various species. But we need to protect, enhance and reintroduce the right things in the right way, and alarmism (another polite way of saying bare-faced lies) à la State of Nature doesn’t help the decision-making process.