Warning for ministers over species targets for England

England will not meet its biodiversity targets at current rates, Tony Juniper, Natural England's chair has said, accusing ministers of moving too slowly to regenerate nature

- Helena Horton

Juniper, who has led the government's nature quango since 2019, warned that ministers were not on track to meet species abundance targets, even though these had been criticised as "embarrassingly poor" by wildlife charities.

The government had set a legally binding species abundance target that said the UK would halt the decline in species abundance by 2030 and commit to increasing the abundance of wildlife by 10% by 2042, compared with 2030 levels.

Juniper said: "We're not moving with the speed that will be needed to meet the 2030 species target. And we're going to have to work much harder to be able to do that." He said ministers needed to work quickly to be able to fix the conflicts between farming and nature.

"This is about reconciling some really quite complicated conundrums, including how, for example, we can maintain a high level of domestic food production at the same time as bringing wildlife back into the landscape. And some of this is about policy. Some of it is about knowledge.