Susanna Reid forced to step in as climate change row erupts

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The Environment Agency (EA), which operates under the Government’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), has released a new study today showing that since 1970, 41 percent of England’s native flora and fauna species have considerably decreased, with 15 percent facing a serious risk of extinction. The report warned that not only could this have a serious impact on global biodiversity, affecting other species in the food chain, but it could also kill off humans.

In a speech highlighting the new report, EA chief executive Sir James Bevan will stress the link between a thriving natural environment and the availability of clean water, good-quality soil and carbon storage needed for humans to survive.

He will say in a speech to the Green Alliance think tank in London on Tuesday: “The biodiversity crisis is a crisis because it won’t just kill the plants and animals, it will kill us too.

“That’s because nature is indivisible and interdependent – nature provides us with a host of things we depend upon, such as clean water, clean air and food.”

According to EA’s latest study, entitled Working with Nature – Chief Scientists Group Report, a quarter of mammals in England face dying out.

Meanwhile, populations of priority mammal, bird, butterfly and moth species, which were already categorised as being the most threatened and requiring conservation action, have gone down by 61 percent.

In his speech, Sir Bevan refers to the 1962 book Silent Spring by US writer Rachel Carson, which has been credited with starting the modern environmental movement, eventually leading to a US-wide ban of the pesticide DTT.

The book, which highlights the destruction of entire ecosystems as a result of reckless pesticide use, will be used by the EA chief to reflect on where humanity stands 60 years later.

His speech says: “On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.

Sixty years on we are closer than ever to that silent spring happening.

“Since we humans and everything we cherish depends on nature, we have the strongest possible interest in avoiding that outcome.”

However, Sir Bevan stresses that all is not lost when it comes to restoring natural habitats, as he highlights the Government’s plans to rewild vast swathes of land across the UK.

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The EA chief shined a spotlight on Steart Marshes on the Severn Estuary, which is a major working wetland that protects 100,000 homes from flooding and also acts as home to hundreds of thousands of plants and animal species.

In total, the EA restored 1,100 hectares of natural habitat over the year 2021-22.

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