West Yorkshire’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy: an urgent call to peaceful arms

Nature is crying out for our help in our region and beyond. Discover how we got here and what can be done to save it before it’s too late …

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, there is a rapture on the lonely shore, there is society, where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but nature more.” – Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

Our natural world, like the planet earth, is one of our kind. Everything it consists of, from the complex, delicate and harmonious balance of animals, plants, rivers and trees to all the phenomenon that takes place beneath the thin kármán line, is exceptional. And not just in our solar system or the milky way or the local group of galaxies we belong to. In all the vastness of the universe, there is nothing like our natural world. We are all there is.

James Lovelock certainly thought so. In his provocative 2019 book Novacene – the title refers to the hypothetical post-anthropocene and post-human-centric future – the late scientist argued that our cosmos simply isn’t old enough to have been able recreate the same conditions that have led to intelligent life on earth to be possible elsewhere (life is some 3.7 billion years in the making on a planet that’s 4.5 billion years old in a cosmos that has been around for 13.8 billion years). “Our existence is a freakish one-off.”

We are, it seems, from a gaian perspective – and visiting little grey aliens and flying saucers aside – alone in the universe. And for all our talk of space travel and colonising other planets – which would also require us to create artificial biospheres to sustain life – we remain, as has always been the case, inextricably bound to this impossibly beautiful blue marble we call home.

Yet, as things stand, as a result of being a uniquely curious, ambitious and inventive species, with spiritual and secular delusions of grandeur – as well as a tendency to act in an invasive way – we humans have not only estranged ourselves from this rare cosmic arcadia, but left it in an extremely perilous state.

For its sins, the UK has been at the forefront of this affront, a world leader in “degrading the natural environment” as Professor Andy Purvis, a biodiversity researcher at the Natural History Museum, put it in 2020. The consequences of our destructive interventions on the planet have been catastrophic.

According to the 2023 State of Nature report, which was produced with the input of over 60 conservation and research organisations, including the Woodland Trust, Friends of the Earth and Natural England, the UK is now one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world.

When it comes to biodiversity, which “underpins all life on earth”, as the World Health Organization has described it, we’re now in the bottom 10% globally. Over the years, just over half of our biodiversity has been destroyed.

Though most of us are oblivious to this fact – for instance, West Yorkshire is one of the most built-up areas in in the country with 85% of its people living in “dense,

historically industrial towns” that today have all the characteristics of a modern urban environment – the degradation of nature on our doorstep, in Yorkshire, God’s Own Country no less, has been striking.

Roughly 80% of peatlands have been damaged. Approximately 80% of wetlands have vanished. Around 80% of protected sites and rivers are in a less than favourable condition. And over the course of 200 years, the region has lost almost 2,000 species with a further 3,000 still at risk of extinction.

These losses, though extreme in their own right, are even more alarming given that two-thirds of the UK’s known species call Yorkshire home along with more native neighbours like rare fungi. It’s bad for nature, both locally and nationally. It’s bad for humans in so, so many ways. It’s bad for economics, as wrecked as that has been for too many years.

And it’s bad for our long suffering planet, which continues to be exploited and let down, as António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, acknowledged in an interview with the Guardian recently. “Let’s recognise our failure,” he said. “[Because] the truth is that we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5C in the next few years.”

As disappointing the response to climate change has been, all isn’t necessarily lost. The good news is that there is now widespread recognition among politicians, in particular – because, ultimately, that’s where most of the power and influence lies – of just how serious a situation this is. But that’s not all.

There’s also consensus that this appalling decline in nature’s once diverse abundance has reached something of a tipping point and that active intervention is necessary to stop and reverse the worrying trend (although, as a caveat, these days that political will must be treated with caution with the Conservatives, for instance, now rolling back on their climate change pledges, with Reform UK, which has been hoovering up former Tories, pursuing a more sceptical, conspiratorial line). Whether there’s a sense of urgency, however, is questionable as you’ll see later on.

In any case, in England, one of the ideas with the most potential that has emerged from this sea change in thinking are local nature recovery strategies. They’re fundamental to what is known as the Nature Recovery Network, which has been described as being “a growing national network of wildlife-rich places, stretching from our cities to countryside, mountains to coast”.

There are 48 strategy areas in total, ensuring that every inch of the country is covered, as per the ecologist John Lawton’s “bigger, better, more joined up” no gaps and no overlaps philosophy. And, of course, that includes West Yorkshire – all 783 or so square miles of it.

How we got here (a very quick and short history)

“It is notorious that there are whole streets in the town of Huddersfield, and many courts and alleys, which are neither flagged, paved, sewered, nor drained; where garbage and filth of every description are left on the surface to ferment and rot; where pools of stagnant water are almost constant, where the dwellings adjoining are thus necessarily caused to be of an inferior and even filthy description; thus where disease is engendered, and the health of the whole town periled.”– Committee elected in Huddersfield to investigate the town’s sanitary conditions, quoted in The Condition of the Working Class in England by Friedrich Engels

We were, long ago and for most of our history, a nomadic species. We wandered from place to place, we hunted wild animals, we gathered wild food and then we moved on, never overstaying our welcome. Our relationship with the planet was, compared to how it is today, more balanced. And we were, far from the Hobbesian take on things, in a mutually beneficial and sustainable state of nature.

This all changed around 12,000 years ago with the neolithic revolution, otherwise known as the (first) agricultural revolution (for some context, it’s believed that we’ve been around for 300,000 years). We had figured out how to farm and, for perhaps the second time ever, we were able to bend nature to our will and leverage it in a way that was advantageous to us as species (the first being our ability to actively start fires).

That momentous moment, however you see it, either as the welcome beginning of our long escape from a perilous, brutal and primal day-to-day existence or a peculiar and unfathomable break from an “affluent lifestyle” (“however you cut it,” as Steven Mithen reflected in a London Review of Books essay in 2017, “farming involves much higher workloads and incurs more physical ailments than relying on the wild”), changed how we saw and interacted with nature.

Instead of it being something that we were fundamentally part of, which provided us with enough sustenance to survive and reproduce in a controlled, stable, symbiotic way (as with all life), it became something that was there to be taken and conquered. It also became something that we could, should and would disentangle ourselves from, as the vanity of our non-Freudian ego asserted itself over the Freudian id. All of this was, in the beginning, an accident. And in the UK we have our European ancestors to thank for it.

The concept of agriculture, via our continental forebears, is believed to have arrived on the British mainland some 4,000–6,000 years ago, setting in motion a chain of events that would change multiple histories. That of our island, that of humanity and that of the planet.

To begin with, it’s believed that the native population of hunter-gatherers were eventually absorbed and replaced by Aegean farmers who introduced a way of living that was, quite literally, more settled. (We are, it appears, more European than leave-supporting Brexiteers and immigrant fearing neighbours would be comfortable acknowledging).

These very farmers would then go on to transform the way we interacted with the natural world, as well as the way it looked. Land was cleared, trees were felled, crops were cultivated, animals were domesticated, houses were built and monuments were erected. And we got better at it as a modest agricultural lifestyle began to evolve and the foundations of an agrarian-based society and economy began to take shape.

And then, roughly between the sixteenth and nineteenth century, another agricultural revolution took place, this time on home soil. It was, as a 2023 paper in Nature explained it, “the result of major structural and technological innovations, notably [the] enclosure of open fields and commons, the adoption of new field rotation systems, the greater use of soil conditioners and fertilisers and the improvement of livestock through selective breeding”.

Much of what took place during this period foreshadowed, with agricultural moderation, what was to come with the industrial revolution – more intensity, more consumption (of natural resources), more destruction and more pollution. As the historian and academic Mark Overton explained in a 2011 article for the BBC, “an essentially organic agriculture was gradually replaced by a farming system that depended on energy-intensive inputs dependent on the exploitation of fossil fuels”.

The advent of machines, our growing sense of self-importance as a species (religious, scientific) and the commercialisation of human life – “economic life moved beyond its agrarian focus as agriculture became but one component of the economic orientation of society and the capital accumulated in agriculture spilled over into other sectors”, as John Gowdy and Lisi Krall described it in a 2013 paper – ushered in a radically new era in natural and human history.

We had finally broken away from nature – by 1851, over half the population of Britain would be living in cities and towns for the first time, with around 82.9% of people in England living in urban areas today – as well as the animal kingdom. Like Narcissus, we then fell in love with a grandiose myth we had manufactured for ourselves, that we were (and are) the best thing to have ever happened on the planet – if not the entire universe.

And so began an unprecedented period of growth, modernisation, environmental ruin and large-scale fossil fuel extraction and usage. A dirty, grey, overcrowded, unsanitary, smoke-filled, time-based world of industry emerged, replacing a relatively sparse, bucolic, rural and task-based way of life that was largely defined by the natural cycle of the seasons.

While it transformed our lives in so many unbelievable ways – the experimental psychologist Steve Pinker has argued that today “we live longer, healthier, safer, wealthier, freer, more peaceful and more stimulating lives than those who came before us” – this long history of scientific and technological progress (less so political and ethical progress, according to the philosopher John Gray) has come at a huge environmental cost.

“Large areas of habitats have been lost with 99.7% of fens, 97% of species-rich grasslands, 80% of lowland heathlands, up to 70% of ancient woodlands and up to 85% of saltmarshes destroyed or degraded,” the Environment Agency explained in press release announcing its 2022 Working with Nature report. “The impacts on species have also been severe, with a quarter of mammals in England and almost a fifth of UK plants threatened with extinction.”

The title of that press release included the word urgent. The summary warned of a “silent spring” for wildlife. You can make your own mind up as to how genuine that sense of urgency was (is), but here are some facts. The lauded Lawton review was commissioned by the then Labour government in 2009. The previous Conservative government’s 25 Year Environment Plan was published eight years later in 2018. Three years later, in 2021, the Environment Act, which featured a section on local nature recovery strategies, became law. In 2023, a few more prime ministers later, the same government announced its Environmental Improvement Plan. Later that summer, a policy paper fleshing out the strategies was published. The first of the 48 local nature recovery strategies, for the west of England, only came out a year ago. And, bringing us up to speed, the consultation for West Yorkshire’s strategy was announced last month on 21 October. The deadline for sharing your views is on 16 November.

If this is urgent then, well …

West Yorkshire’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy

“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” – Chief Seattle

West Yorkshire’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy, while relying on the same guidance and the same goals as part of a connected approach that promises to cover the entirety of England – is unique to the region.

The overarching goal is to “pioneer a post-industrial nature recovery” and “forge a just, blue-green revolution, from moor to forest, peak to valley, river to city”. Water, the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) explains in its documentation, is fundamental to the entire strategy, a “big blue thread” that brings everything together.

Indicative of the complexity of the task at hand and the specificity required for a thorough, joined up response within the boundaries of West Yorkshire (and to more comprehensively target the patchiness of nature here), 23 priorities have been identified across seven key themes, six of which relate to habitats (built environment, farmland and agriculture, grasslands, trees and woodland, uplands, and water and wetlands). The other theme refers to “quality and condition” – think less light and noise pollution, healthier, more biodiverse soil and a better, more balanced ecosystem.

But that’s not all. Further priorities (12 in total) have been developed for the many species that can be found in West Yorkshire, from red squirrels and rare black-necked grebes to white-clawed crayfish and bilberry pug moths. A long list of species that are “at a high risk of extinction” has also been put together and, from this list, an additional priority list of animals, fungi and plants has been created.

Finally, there are also cross-cutting themes, which “capture the overarching ‘soft’ measures that are relevant throughout”. These include “cross-boundary thinking” (habitats are not bound by human borders, while species enjoy freedom of movement), “landowner engagement” (self-explanatory), “nature connectedness” (how feeling part of nature delivers multiple benefits) and “enabling conditions” (nature recovery is only possible if “enabled” by data, leadership and cash).

The strategy has also put together an initial number of actions (described as measures) that can be taken to ensure that all of the priorities are achieved. There are three types, which have been designed to “interact, support and amplify” each other.

First up, we have mapped measures. You can think of these as already identified priority areas, “which will help nature the most now”. Then there’s non-mapped measures. This self-explanatory: habitats just as important as the mapped ones, but not yet mapped. Finally, there’s supporting measures. Again, it does what it says on the tin: they “relate to and amplify the impact of habitat measures”.

To measure whether the strategy is working or not, the team behind it have put together five work in progress targets for the region. They include reducing the number of at-risk species, increasing canopy cover, expanding the area of active peat-forming blanket and lowland bog, improving the ecological status of rivers and boosting access to greenspace.

It’s worth expanding on the key habitat themes to give a little more detail about what’s involved and why each of them matters. To begin with, we have the “built environment”, i.e. manmade structures. This takes up a lot of the land in West Yorkshire, land which used to belong to nature. The goals here are to improve and introduce more nature in towns and cities, create “blue and green links” that connect patches of nature, develop habitats on brownfield sites and create, respectively, nature-friendly transport infrastructure and buildings.

Next we have “farmland and agriculture”, which also takes up a lot of real estate in West Yorkshire. The two main priorities here are to make farming more nature friendly while enabling farmers to maintain and grow output, and develop more species-rich hedges and field margins “create a mosaic of habitats and connections across the farmland landscape”.

Then there’s “Grasslands”. This is a big focus area, as 97% of it in Britain has been lost over the course of 100 years or so years. The ambitions here are to improve acid and ancient grasslands – in part to protect rare and important fungi – strengthen the modest but important magnesian limestone grasslands and improve what are described as neutral grasslands.

Following that we have “trees and woodlands”, an area that the UK has been failing to protect adequately (for example, according to the Woodland Trust, only 45% of targets have been met in the last four years). The aims here are to “unlock the significant biodiversity and cultural value of irreplaceable, ancient, veteran and notable trees”, to increase canopy cover and to better conserve and enhance wood pasture and historic parkland.

As for the “uplands”, which has long been a source of inspiration for creatives in the region – think the Brontë sisters – the plan here is to get peatlands back up to “full health” (they were, according to the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, particularly damaged by the government in the 1950s and 1960s), to develop more connected moorland and upland habitats and to create more connected spaces for nature to thrive in moorland and upland habitats.

Finally, we have “water and wetlands”, which, while being a core theme of the strategy, also has huge historical significance in West Yorkshire. For example, as the WYCA explains, some of the big cities and towns in the region emerged and grew around water, as their names symbolically reveal. Bradford was, in Old English, known as Broad Ford, Leeds’ name is thought to have emerged from the Celtic Lādenses, which translates as “people living by the strongly flowing river”, and Calderdale’s name was partly inspired by the River Calder.

The priorities here are to transform the spaces next to, along or near to water-based habitats (e.g. rivers, streams, ponds, ditches), increase the amount of biodiversity within water bodies, better manage the flow and storage of water in upper and lower catchments and “reinstate lots of wetlands within habitat corridors”.

Back to nature

“I was acutely aware of being a stranger to the moorland. I had no words for sounds that I heard. In my ignorance, each birdsong entered my consciousness as a sweet but secret music. All clues as to the type of bird were beaten into the background. Each bee was just a bee, small and sombre … I wished I could muster the words for the things that I saw and heard … the creatures that showed themselves …. the plants that flowered and thorned … But I couldn’t … I was bereft of language for this landscape, suffering from a kind of amnesia shared with others of my generation.” – Melanie Challenger, On Extinction: How We Became Estranged From Nature

In 2007, 156 years after the UK first became a predominantly urban country, the rest of the messy, imbalanced and imperfect world followed suit. The United Nations reported that for the first time in human history, more than half of the world’s population now lived in urban areas. By 2018, it was up to 55%. By 2050, it’s expected to be up to 68% and between then and now, it’s forecast that there’ll be 43 mega cities with more than 10 million people living in them respectively by 2030.

All of this suggests the continuation of an inevitable and irreversible trend away from a life in the sticks that began, at scale, in the first half of the nineteenth century. Yet, there’s also plenty of recent evidence that indicates there is more of an appetite for countryside living. Well, in England at least.

For example, since the middle of 2020, the year that the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic – with the spread of Covid-19 effectively shutting the world down – the rural population in England has been growing faster than in urban areas. We now have 10 million people (approximately 19% of England’s population) living outside of towns and cities, up from 9.5 million people in 2021.

Among other things, such as the way we work – which remains relatively flexible for many of us, despite the pushback from outdated managers with trust and control issues – the pandemic had a profound impact on our relationship with nature, as Dr Tom Marshall, senior responsible officer for the people and nature survey at Natural England, observed in May 2022, three months after all legal restrictions were lifted.

“Few could have predicted how being asked to remain indoors for large periods of time would inspire the country to connect with nature,” he said at the time. “But people are now spending more time in green spaces and have developed a deeper connection to nature.”

While the opportunity to enjoy the natural world wasn’t necessarily uniform, for many of us living in urban areas who were lucky enough to be outside, in a park, a field, in the woods and so on, there was a newfound appreciation for nature that had somehow got lost all those years ago. It was as if we were rediscovering a past that we’d always belonged to, a homecoming of sorts as impossible as that was. We realised, beyond our concrete jungles, just how beautiful it all is, how it feels like home and how, ultimately, we are nothing without it.

---

The consultation is open until Sunday 16 November. Head here to have your say.