Will birds lose their supper through CAP Reform?
In the rush to take advantage of higher commodity prices such as wheat, wildlife across Europe is being forgotten, according to leading game and wildlife research charity, the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust.
This concern comes at a time when a recent report produced by the House of Lords European Union Committee calls for a major restructuring of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In the report, the committee recommends the phasing out of direct farm subsidies for production in favour of EU financial support targeted towards rural development.
Dr Alastair Leake, project manager of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust's demonstration farm at Loddington in Leicestershire, where wildlife conservation research and profitable farming successfully co-exist, is in firm agreement with many of the committee's conclusions, but feels that some of the suggestions do not go far enough. He said, "We very much welcome this report. Farmers are businessmen and they just want to be paid a fair price for the products that they produce rather than relying on production subsidies. However, if we expect our farmers to maintain the wildlife on their land then they should receive a substantial incentive for implementing environmental measures that benefit wildlife."
Increased global population and prosperity has caused the prices of basic food commodities such as wheat to double in the past 12 months and this will inevitably lead to intensification of production. Already in the UK wildlife are feeling the pinch following the announcement last summer that set-aside would be set to zero. Much land set-aside from production is now being ploughed up and numerous wildlife species such as lapwing, stone curlew, skylark and brown hare could be affected.
Dr Leake says, "So far the mitigation measures planned by the Government are inadequate and need to be made far more flexible and attractive if we are to preserve many of the conservation gains for wildlife that have been achieved in recent decades."
Dr Leake continues, "Prospects for some farm wildlife now look gloomy, and we suspect that numbers of farmland birds and mammals which had stabilised or increased over the last decade could begin to fall again. But on the positive side we believe that there are options which could reduce the impact of these changes, particularly if the bulk of CAP supports conservation on plain ordinary farmland so that it can continue to offer little jewels of biodiversity."
In its report, the Lords Committee proposes that a significant proportion of CAP funding is channelled into rural development. Dr Leake, says, "We strongly agree with this particularly as we do not want to see funding disappear out of the rural economy. It needs to be directed towards eco-system services, which support enhanced water quality, soil erosion control and carbon sequestration, as well as funding technology that mitigates against climate change. We also firmly believe that the EU should scrap its bio-fuel targets. They waste land, do not improve carbon balances and more importantly, damage precious habitat on a world scale."
Dr Stephen Tapper, the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust's director of policy and public affairs, said, "In Britain our stewardship schemes, which are designed to enhance farmland conservation, need continued incremental improvements to ensure that the broad sweep of our countryside remains as rich in wildlife as it is productive in food. We do not want a two tier countryside where half is industrial farming, and half is a country playground centred on national parks, where farming is pushed to the margins."
