Our response to 'National Parks Health Check Report – Nature Recovery'

Nature Recovery as a National Park Priority 

National Parks represent our finest landscapes, famed for their spectacular beauty, varied wildlife and rich cultural heritage. They provide access to green spaces, help tackle climate change and biodiversity loss, promote health and well-being, and support local communities. We are committed to being beacons for a sustainable future, where both nature and people thrive.

The 'National Parks Health Check Report – Nature Recovery', released by Campaign for National Parks on April 10, 2024, offers a vital overview of nature within National Parks, drawing primarily from data collected between 2020 and 2022.  Much progress has been made in recent months to better understand how our National Parks can deliver more for nature, people and the climate and initiatives are already underway to address some of the issues raised in the health check. However, we recognise the potential and the necessity to do more. We join the Campaign for National Parks in calling for urgent action to provide the funding and policy framework that will enable National Parks to effectively support the nation’s wildlife.

National Parks are internationally important spaces for wildlife, our legal ‘first purpose’ is to conserve and enhance their natural beauty, wildlife, and cultural heritage. Given this special designation as protected spaces, National Parks require funding and powers to be the focal points for the nation's response to the nature and climate emergency we currently face.

We have long called for change on this. Our 2022 report ‘Nature Recovery in the English National Parks’ made a range of recommendations that apply now more than ever.

Work for nature in our National Parks depends on the extensive expertise and knowledge of our staff, landowners, and partners. These partnerships are crucial for developing relationships, projects, and schemes that drive positive changes in line with our management plans. These plans are designed with a ‘whole landscape’ approach and are not solely focused on the small proportion of land owned by the NPA.

We can build on our expertise in nature recovery with collaboration and better integration of land use to allow nature to flourish. National Parks are living and working landscapes, and we want to work collaboratively with our landowning community to make space for nature to recover by working with the people that have shaped the landscapes. As trusted intermediaries, we can support the objectives of nature recovery as well as supporting the land management community and harnessing their knowledge and expertise in relation to nature.

With this expertise and a partnership approach, English National Parks could potentially deliver 145,000ha of nature-rich areas by 2030, but would need funding of around £880m to do so. National Park Authorities are committed to working in partnerships to transform nature recovery at a landscape scale. We need more support from the Government and statutory agencies to realize this potential.

The recommendations made by Campaign for National Parks in their report go some way to achieving this, but we must go further to drive practical delivery on the ground at the scale needed to reverse the decline of nature and to realise our aspirations for nature to thrive.

1.       Prioritise National Parks for Nature Recovery

The new powers under the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 are a promising start and place an additional duty on Statutory Bodies to further the purposes of National Park purposes.

We would like to see more collaboration between those organisations who own or have responsibility for land within National Parks. We would love to see those organisations using their own land holdings as examples of best practice, helping to inspire action for nature across the whole landscape and leveraging wider action in National Parks. Furthermore, we hope to see such organisations prioritising National Parks in their work on nature recovery, deploying sufficient resources to ensure evidence is gathered, effective nature recovery strategy is developed, and at scale delivery is supported for NPs.

We know from our work on the ground that some nature designations are not delivering nature recovery and so there needs to be a pragmatic approach to supporting habitat that is resilient to climate change and to consider adaptations to habitat maintenance in designated sites to secure long term resilience. 

We want to see nature recovery and the measures for it move beyond SSSI condition assessments. Other land can and is managed for nature and we must not overlook this as a measure for nature recovery.

2.      Long term Funding, for and within National Parks

National Park Authorities need long term investment if we are to successfully convene ‘Team Nature’ to deliver on Nature Recovery.

This means:

• Long-term investment in core NP Authority infrastructure to support diversification of funding and reduce reliance on the public purse

• A just transition for farmers and land managers, recognising that advice and guidance for landowners to get into schemes such as ELM are a critical success factor and needs investment

• The scaling up and long-term commitment to the Farming in Protected Landscapes scheme (FiPL)

• A Climate Peatlands Fund should be established to fulfil the immense potential that National Park peatlands offer for carbon sequestration

• Public bodies who own land in National Parks should be required to prioritise investment in those spaces:

  • Water companies should invest in upgraded infrastructure in protected landscapes as a matter of urgency and cease the discharge of waste water into the network swiftly moving away from a model where they pollute water courses then pay a fine for doing so

  • Ministry of Defence should pay for peat restoration where unexploded ordinance can add to cost

  • Forestry bodies should be required to remove plantations to restore peatland

3.      See Nature Connectedness as a cross governmental objective

We know that nature connectedness has a huge impact on how people view and care for nature.

• Projects like Generation Green that bring young people into Protected Landscapes and provide opportunities for activity that enhances mental and physical wellbeing as well as learning skills for life could be expanded and given long term funding.

• Health and wellbeing and education initiatives within National Parks introduce a diverse audience to these special places and can significantly reduce the burden on physical and mental healthcare with proven enhanced outcomes for those participating in activity programmes

• We could and should see the alignment of policy not simply on environment, but on energy, social care, health and wellbeing, transport, economic growth and planning, to consider how their objectives can be furthered by directing resources towards National Park management plan goals, including for nature.

• We need improved access to our national network of Protected Landscapes so more people can benefit from them, this requires. Significant investment in sustainable transport, active travel, rights of way, disabled access and visitor infrastructure in National Parks.

Communities are at the heart of our National Parks. Nearly 400,000 people live and work in Britain’s national parks, many of whom have made the land their home for generations.

These communities must be supported to lead and communicate on nature recovery, and have access to the tools and resources to create their own new nature-based economies so rural communities can thrive.