Staffordshire Wildlife Trust worked closely with the authority to draw up the Declaration, advising on actions that the authority could take to help to reverse the decline of wild species and provide a more hospitable landscape for wildlife.

The Declaration builds on the momentum from COP26 and puts the county in a stronger position to fulfil the aspirations of the new Environment Act, which became law in November 2021.

Under the new legislation, all regions in England are required to develop a ‘Local Nature Recovery Strategy’ (LNRS), designed to deliver national environmental policies, as laid out in the Environment Act, Agriculture Act and the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan.

The LNRS is intended to contribute to a national Nature Recovery Network - a major commitment in the government’s Environment Plan - and will focus on the local delivery of a thriving network of wildlife-rich sites through partnership working between stakeholders such as local authorities, farmers, landowners and communities.

LNRSs are due to launch across England in April 2022, and Staffordshire Wildlife Trust has already been laying the foundations for Staffordshire’s LNRS, by bringing partners to the table early on to discuss its development.

In the Environment Act it stipulates that public bodies must ‘have regard’ to the LNRS, but there is no legal requirement to actually apply and implement the strategies. In particular, it is not explicit that Local Authorities should use them in their day-to-day decision making, especially in land use planning decisions. The Wildlife Trusts tried to secure an amendment to the legislation that would fix this when the Bill was progressing through Parliament, but we were unsuccessful.  

It is vitally important that the LNRS for Staffordshire does not become a ‘dust-gatherer’. The natural world is in crisis and we cannot stand by as it continues to collapse. If we do nothing, we’ll continue to see once-common wild species (such as hedgehogs and water voles pictured below) become rarer or perhaps even disappear altogether, and more precious wild spaces lost. For example we have lots countless acres of wild flower meadows (photo below).

It is likely that the council will be the authority responsible for the LNRS, and the Declaration confirms that the council will go much further than ‘having regard’ to the LNRS. It outlines the authority’s intention that the LNRS will ‘underpin planning, development and land management decisions’. It also pledges to embed nature’s recovery across all council plans and policies – not just those directly relating to the environment – and also to ensure the LNRS is well understood across the authority.

The Nature Recovery Declaration includes a more detailed series of commitments that will form part of the LNRS too.

Pledges include:

• developing an evidence-based action plan including short and long-term targets for putting nature into recovery by 2030;
• after satisfying safety and visibility priorities and the Highway Code, develop highways verge cutting regimes that maximise potential for carbon storage, sequestration and biodiversity;
• prioritising the protection of peatlands and other high quality wildlife habitats;
• formulating a tree strategy that is underpinned by ecological mapping and the ‘right tree, right place’ approach;
• investing in nature-based solutions to climate change in order to tackle the nature crisis and climate emergency together.

Only a handful of local authorities around the country have declared an ecological emergency, and by making this commitment to support nature’s recovery, Staffordshire County Council is demonstrating leadership.

They have recognised the urgency of the nature crisis and the fact that it is no longer enough simply to halt the decline of nature – we must reverse the declines and increase species and habitat abundance.

Now that a Declaration to support Nature’s Recovery has been made, we need to move quickly and start to deliver on these pledges.