The Grasslands Trust has condemned the suggestion in the Farming Regulation Task Force Report (1), published today that a key environmental regulation has been “gold plated”. They have also welcomed the Task Force’s recommendations to improve the way important grasslands are identified.
 
Miles King, Director of Conservation at the Trust said: “It is nonsense to suggest that this Regulation has been gold-plated, when it is clearly failing to protect the resource it is aimed at. Intelligent regulations are needed to protect important grasslands from intensive agriculture and these need teeth if they are going to work. The Review has completely missed the opportunity to strengthen the Regulations available to protect important grasslands. This means yet more grassland wildlife and archaeology will go under the plough or be damaged by farm chemicals or drainage. We will step up our campaign to get intelligent regulations on the statute book, and properly enforced.”

Important grasslands (2) that lie outside England’s protected areas (3) are vulnerable to damage or destruction by modern agriculture.  Nearly half of all surviving lowland meadows and pastures are outside protected areas. Implementing part of a 25-year old European law (4), The Environmental Impact Assessment (Agriculture) Regulations are supposed to protect “semi-natural areas”, mostly grasslands, from the effects of “intensive agriculture”. Yet these Regulations are entirely ineffective.  

The Trust is campaigning to strengthen this important tool for protecting biodiversity on farmland. Alongside other key environmental organisations (5) The Trust prepared a dossier of important grasslands that have been destroyed in the last four years, grasslands that should have been protected by the Regulations. The findings were presented to the previous Government.
“We wrote to the previous Secretary of State Hilary Benn, highlighting the problems with this Regulation, but were rebuffed – Defra’s view seems to be that they have satisfied the European Commission by creating a Regulation which looks good on paper – but it is just that - a paper exercise. We have gone to the Commission and lodged a formal complaint with them. The Commission is now investigating (6) whether there has been a failure to implement the Directive in England and we are working closely with them to provide as much information about the issue as possible.”

“Natural England, is supposed to be enforcing these Regulations, but the Regulations are so weak that it is impossible for them to do so. Just last week we heard of a farm with meadows rich in wildlife that had been sold in 2009. Natural England were tipped off that these meadows had been converted into intensive grasslands and their wildlife had been destroyed. NE confirmed the destruction had happened but were unable to take any action because the Regulations are so weak as to be useless.”

“Grasslands rich in wildlife, landscape character and archaeology are almost gone from England’s countryside, especially outside protected areas. Many farmers want to see wildlife on their farms, but economics works against their wishes. We cannot rely on voluntary measures such as Agri-environment schemes, to protect these grasslands; Intelligent Regulation is essential if we are going to have any of these grasslands left outside nature reserves in the future.”

The Grasslands Trust has also welcomed the recognition, in the Taskforce Report, that the current approach to identifying important grasslands for protection from agriculture, is inadequate.  Miles King said “We are intrigued by the suggestion from the Task Force that there are better ways to identify valuable grasslands than the current approach, which relies on outdated and inaccurate information. We look forward to working with Defra and Natural England to explore how best to do achieve what the Taskforce recommends”.