The House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee published its report on Protected Areas on 26th July with the headline of We urgently need to protect England’s nature. The Chair for the Committee is Kate Parminter who is a Liberal Democrat member and she is based in Surrey but in the past she was involved in the Horsham County as a Councillor. One of the other members of that Committee is Steven Croft who is the Bishop of Oxford and he is also a member of the House of Lords. As it happens one of my friends Philip Ritchie who is a Church leader who I worked with in Brighton in the past is now a leader in the Oxford Diocese so he will know Steven Croft. One of the other members of the Committee is Margaret Jones who is a Labour member and she was an MP in Wales previously and she now lives in Hove. She is also called Maggie Jones. I only included the photos of Kathryn and Steven in the image.

I spotted this item in the that was published by the Committee via the Institute of Engineering and Technology which published it here. Its headline is UK will fail to protect 30 per cent of English land and seas without action, peers say. The first few words from the document is

The government is falling short of meeting its commitment of protecting a third of English land and seas by 2030, peers say.

A report from the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee said that an “urgent step change” is needed if the target is going to be delivered on time. It found that only around 6.5 per cent of natural habitats in England are effectively protected. An additional three million hectares (23.5 per cent) will need to be given protected status in order to achieve the ‘30 by 30’ target. This equates to an area roughly one and a half times the size of Wales.

The document published by the Committee can be obtained from here. There are several aspects which include the Chair’s comments which involves these comments which are

The Chair of the Environment and Climate Change Committee, Baroness Parminter, said:

“Our report makes it clear that the Government faces a huge challenge to meet the ‘30 by 30’ target it signed up to last year.

“The Government must designate more areas to be protected, meeting international criteria, and manage and monitor all protected areas better to achieve favourable condition.

“Time is running out to halt species decline and recover nature for the public good. We are therefore calling on the Government to act urgently as it has just seven crucial years to fulfil its nature crisis pledge.”

It will be very interesting to see what will happen from the Committee and the many people who support this.