Consultation & Inquiry Responses

The BES Scottish Policy Group’s approach to the questionnaire is in line with the BES position: to make the best scientific evidence accessible to decision-makers and is based on the expertise of our membership. We have responded to a select number of questions concerning raptor conservation and predation management, muirburn, and mountain hares – where our answers can be supported by evidence.

Our approach is to provide context in terms of the likely impacts of climate change on Scotland’s natural environment. This shows why urgency is required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and why adaptation as part of the Climate Change Plan is as important as mitigation to protect Scotland’s biodiversity, ecosystems and habitats.

This consultation is the start of the Scottish Government’s process to develop a new rural support policy for Scotland. It presents both an opportunity and a challenge to create a sustainable agricultural system that is better balanced for farming, food production, the countryside, wildlife, and the delivery of public goods. Public goods connected to the environment include for example, clean air and water, healthy and stable soils, improved/enhanced carbon sequestration, biodiversity and healthy ecosystems.

Our response explained how climate change is shifting the Arctic to a ‘new normal’, characterised by a warmer, wetter and more variable environment and reduced volume of the sea and land-based ice. Climate change also interacts with other major threats to Arctic ecosystems, including pollution, invasive alien species, industrial development and local disturbances. These environmental pressures are driving major physical and ecological change.

The BES welcomes the Health and Harmony: the future for food, farming and the environment in a Green Brexit consultation as an opportunity to reshape England’s land management policies. A move away from incentives which primarily prioritise provisioning services from the environment, such as food and fibre, towards incentives which also include regulating, supporting, and cultural ecosystem services, such as disease and pest regulation and soil formation, will provide a better outcome for both people and wildlife.

We believe there is the potential to reduce biosecurity threats to the UK through implementing better targeted, resourced, and stricter biosecurity rules and regulations.

We believe the Rural Payments Agency’s (RPA) delivery of Agri-Environment Schemes should foster greater cooperation and collaboration between stakeholders to help deliver greater benefits for biodiversity and ecological services. Our response highlights how the RPA can put the environment at the heart of its work.

Our response welcomed such a broad plan for the environment but highlighted that there were many unmeasurable and unambitious targets and that without legislation underpinning the intentions set out in the plan, it is unlikely to be enforced.

We contributed to the Royal Society of Biology’s response, which highlighted uncertainty over continued rights of EEA workers in the UK, issues over rights and status, the inflexibility of the current system, and the potential impact of immigration changes on the UK biosciences and industrial strategy.