WWT's Plan for Nature Report Launch in London

On 20 July 2016, I travelled to London after school and had a brilliant evening attending Wildfowl and Wetland Trust's launch of their Rich in Nature Report #planfornature at the Houses of Parliament, hearing some inspiring speakers and meeting lots of interesting speakers.

The report is really important in terms of setting out what the Government's 25 year Plan for Nature should include.

Speakers included Stanley Johnson, Caroline Lucas, Rachael Maskell and Prof Georgina Mace who all urged the new Environment Secretary to make the Government’s proposed “25 year plan for nature” a priority, and they welcomed WWT’s suggestion that the Government be held to account through an annual statement to Parliament on the state of natural wealth.

It was really interesting to hear the speakers and talk to attendees from many of the nature and environmental charities afterwards.

Young conservationist Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig and Dr Richard Benwell, WWT
Photograph copyright WWT

Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig
Photograph copyright Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Martin Spray, WWT

Dr Richard Benwell, WWT

Caroline Lucas

Professor Georgina Mace

Stanley Johnson

Rachael Maskell

This is the link to the WWT article http://www.wwt.org.uk/news/all-news/2016/07/wwt-news/60888/

Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said:

“Unfortunately a year into this Parliament there is no sign of a 25 year plan and the promise has been weakened along the way. 

“In the post-EU world it’s more important than ever that we have a strong environmental plan for 25 years and that we have signposts along the way to that, like this wonderful new report from WWT which rightly calls for targets to set our direction and Parliamentary culpability to make sure that we achieve our goals.”

This was one section from the WWT article, which made me smile:

The evening was attended by 80 guests including environmental charities, land managers, businesses, academics and environment communicators including ‘urban birder’ David Lindo and ‘bird girl’ Mya-Rose Craig.

About the Author

Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig in Antarctica
Photograph copyright Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig

Mya-Rose Craig is a 14 year old young British Bangladeshi birder, naturalist, conservationist, environmentalist, activist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol and writes the successful Birdgirl Blog, with posts about birding and conservation from around the world. She loved seeing Mountain Gorillas in East Africa and Penguins in Antarctica over Christmas 2015, her 7th continent.

Mya-Rose was a Bristol European Green Capital Ambassador along with Kevin McCloud, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Tony Juniper, Simon King, Miranda Krestovnikoff and Shaun the Sheep! See the full list of Bristol Ambassadors. She has also been listed with the singer songwriter George Ezra and actress Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones as one of Bristol's most influential young people. She organised a conference in June 2016 aiming to increase the ethnic diversity in nature. Please connect with her on LinkedIn (Mya-Rose Birdgirl Craig) so that she can invite you to join the Race Equality in Nature LinkedIn Group and be part of the change. Please like her Birdgirl Facebook Page and follow her on Birdgirl Twitter