Will we miss this opportunity?

There is a lot of talk at the moment about the need for a credible voice to represent the welfare of our wildlife. Not a zealot who opposes all forms of progress or someone who can be wooed by lunch at the Palace of Westminster but someone who can compose a logical argument for the conservation of wildlife as a priority for the UK.

The feeling is that our NGOs are simply too quiet and have convinced themselves that they stand a better chance of influencing policy from within, rather than shouting from the outside. It seems like a good point until you consider that biodiversity loss in the UK is at crisis point and some of our biggest NGOs have been around for 100 years or more.

So has their strategy worked? The evidence suggests otherwise but I'm sure they would argue that things would be even worse if.....

Nature conservation is relatively new to the UK. Our first real policy for nature was introduced in 1949 following the Huxley Committee report of 1947 which recommended the introduction of protected status for certain areas deemed to be of significant value to nature.

These views were echoed by the first Chairman of the Nature Conservancy, Arthur Tansley, who wrote in 1945 that he blamed high taxes and death duties for the break up of large family estates which was leading to development and land use change on previously 'safe' lands. Therefore these sites needed 'public protection'.

Fast forward to 2010 and another government report, Making Space for Nature, chaired by Sir John Lawton, states that the system of protecting nature in reserves hasn't worked and that what is required is landscape scale conservation that considers all the areas in between the reserves not just the reserves themselves.

Our biggest NGOs can claim to have had the same thoughts when they launched their own initiatives such as Futurescapes and Living Landscapes but these have only really been around for the past 5 years or so and most data about biodiversity loss show declines from the 1960s and 1970s so why has it taken so long to think in terms of landscapes rather than reserves?

And why has it been another government report that everyone is suddenly citing?

Yes nature does need someone to stand up for it but is anyone up to the job?

I read with interest that our Prime Minister won't be attending the Earth Summit in Rio next year because it clashes with a previous engagement - the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. He was being slated for the snub with claims that it sends a message that we're not taking the environment seriously. What do people think he can add? I'm sure there are people far better qualified, after all it wasn't a Prime Minister that wrote 'Making Space for Nature'.

So who is qualified? I played this game with some friends recently, it was a bit like 'Who would like to invite to dinner?'. Suggestions varied wildly from Sir Paul McCartney to Kate Humble to Johnny Kingdom and more (and worse).

I myself suggested sending in Peter Marren to negotiate, Mark Avery to create the policy and Sir David Attenborough to smooth things over.

With so much chatter about biodiversity at the moment it seems to me that there is a real opportunity to capture the public imagination and really do something that will halt biodiversity loss but it is going to take someone or an organisation who is willing to stand up to government, build bridges between the NGOs, motivate the hugely impressive volunteers, and look for the opportunities not the problems.

Failing that we need a revolution.