WALES CLIMATE change minister Julie James continues to try to slide out of a solemn commitment in 2021 to fund desperately urgent attempts to save Wales’s curlews from extinction within 10 years.
She knows very well that the Cardiff government is under international obligations to protect this marvellous and characterful bird, with its distinctive downward-curving bill. Last November, she promised funding to back crucial work to halt its dire decline.
More than five months after we urged her to keep to her word, she continues to vacillate.
Mick Green, the expert ornithologist and wildlife campaigner leading efforts to save Wales’s curlews, tells us: “We welcomed the minister’s words of support, but these must be translated into immediate action and funding on the ground.
“Extinction does not wait for civil service inertia. We have already lost one breeding season without funding since the launch of the recovery plan last November – we need decisions and action now.
“Natural Resources Wales is not fit for purpose. It should be run by ecologists, but instead we have bean-counters with no knowledge of how the natural world works. I pity my colleagues on the ground in NRW who are desperately trying to get things done despite the best efforts of management.
“For NRW to propose tree planting on known curlew habitats is a travesty and probably unlawful. It is an example of its lack of joined up ecological thinking.”
Bronterre News 