Standing in the middle of a local wood wondering how it could be managed to recover its biodiversity, a thought suddenly came to mind - is there any help from the UK government? Trying to answer the question proved to be as complex as the habitat I was standing in.
As a tax payer I am always interested in where our money is going. The decision about how it is spent is down to politicians and civil servants; I have very little say. One area that I am interested in is how much of tax payer’s money is being spent on recovering the UK’s badly depleted biodiversity. When a £25 m Species Survival Fund was announced, I was intrigued about how much of the money was going to reach the frontline of nature conservation. What was behind my interest is a simple question: for every pound that the government spends how much of it actually gets to the people who are working hard to try and save our biodiversity? For example, it costs HMRC just under one pence to collect and redistribute our money. For £1 taken in tax, 99p is available to go onto the next stage in its expenditure but how much actually gets to the frontline - is it 75p, 50p, or less? There are three broad questions: how is funding allocated to particular problems, how much of every pound announced actually gets to the people on the frontline, and once it get there how well is it being spent?
To help navigate through the different legislation and funding involved in recovering a species I chose the Dormouse as the test case - how much is actually being spent on improving its habitat. Dormice are a key indicator species; where they occur the habitat is usually very suitable for a wide range of other species. They are also particularly sensitive to habitat and population fragmentation, so their presence is an indication of habitat integrity. The dormouse is protected by law but how effective prosecutions are is unclear. It is reported in the The State of Britain’s Dormice 2023 that Hazel dormice have undergone a long decline in Britain and monitoring of populations in established woodlands shows a continuing decrease in its population. Between 2000 and 2022, the National Dormouse Monitoring Programme shows that the population has fallen by 70 per cent. Therefore, the dormouse is a good case to follow the money from the tax payers pocket to improving its habitat.
The first step was to work through the The Environmental Targets (Biodiversity) (England) Regulations 2023 ( part of Environmental Act 2021 ) which has the aim of reducing the risk of a species extinction by 2042. At the heart of the legislation is an index that will monitor its progress. However, the act assumes there are around 40,000 different native species in the UK, but the index only covers about 20% of them. Checking the index there is no mention of the dormouse therefore any funding via this route will be zero.
I am assuming, because it is not clear, that Species Survival Fund is part of the government’s efforts to achieve its biodiversity targets. Over the last few years the government has announced various funds such as an £80m The Green Recovery Challenge Fund but when I contacted the organisations involved in managing how it was spent, in particular its impact on species recovery I was deafened by silence. I am assuming that silence means that the money spent had no impact on species recovery.
Armed with the experience of how previous spending was managed, I worked through the details of the Species Survival Fund where I found that it was managed by the National Lottery Heritage Fund who have a broad criteria for distribution of the money and very little about specific species. Further searching found that my local Wildlife Trust received about £1m. They are going to spend it on projects that include: dry and wet heathland scrapes, wetland creation, willow coppicing, creation and restoration of ponds, reintroductions of Ladybird spider, Sand lizard and Marsh clubmoss, woodland ride and glade creation, and the construction of a bat roost. There is no specific action to recover Dormice but it is part of their on going operations.
Funding can come indirectly through other organisations such as Natural England, ELMs, DEFRA etc. At the local level Dorset has a Local Nature Strategy. But when I contacted them for specific information about species recovery, you guessed it, more silence!
Summarising what I have found out so far about the the position of the dormouse; there appears to be no tax payer’s money directly reaching people on the frontline to help with the recovery of its habitat, either from national or local government. Any work that is being carried out is being done on the broad shoulders of charities and volunteers. In general, there are so many organisations involved in managing the money towards the frontline that by the time that they have had their cut then the tax payers pound will be considerably reduced but by how much is unclear. If I was a struggling dormouse settling down to hibernate, I will be dreaming about another difficult year!
PS: Big thanks to the Secretary of State for DEFRA who along with his colleagues answered some of questions about the effectiveness of government funding for species recovery which will help with future posts on this subject. If any of organisations mentioned above reply to my questions then this post will be updated.