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Wildlife Trust boss wants climate crisis at the centre of leadership race
21/07/2022
The Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust has written to all local Conservative MPs
Following on from the record-breaking temperatures we experienced at the start of this week, the boss of the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) has urged local Conservative MPs to ensure that the nature and climate crises are at the heart of the debate during the party’s leadership race.
The BBOWT Chief Executive, Estelle Bailey, has written to all 16 Conservative MPs in its three counties, including Banbury’s Victoria Prentis.
In her letter Ms Bailey told the MPs that change threatens to devastate fragile wild habitats across the UK, which some species depend upon. She added that humans have already destroyed huge tracts of the natural world through agriculture, development and pollution, with numerous once-common species such as red squirrels, turtle doves and dormice now on the brink of extinction, having already vanished in many places.
According to an Office for National Statistics survey 75 per cent of UK adults consider climate change to be a serious problem.
Ms Bailey said: “The cost of not tackling the nature and climate crisis head on, immediately, would be huge for our economy and communities. We need nature as much as it needs us.
“As the weather this week has reminded us, the nature and climate crisis is getting worse. While the cost-of-living crisis and other geopolitical issues rightly attract considerable attention, we cannot slow the pace of our action to restore the natural environment or be distracted from the urgent need to restore broken ecosystems and devastated habitats.”
In her letter, Ms Bailey praised the importance that the Conservative Party’s 2019 manifesto gave to protecting and restoring the environment, with the aim of developing “the most ambitious environmental programme of any country on earth”.
In the recent hustings for the Tory leadership race many of the candidates initially refused to confirm that they would uphold the current Government target of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Published: by Banbury FM Newsteam