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Working for Natural England I became used to the annual ebbs and flows of environmental funding and watched as over the years the arena changed from that of plenty to that of none. Cuts to DEFRA’s budget have been highlighted in a recent article in The Guardian1 which suggests that cuts “equal 57% in real terms over the course of two parliaments”. These cuts are reflected in the budgets of the DEFRA family organisations, which have been continually slashed resulting in less money in the system year on year for important environmental work; looking forward, this trend looks set to continue.
At Natural England, with less money in the system, environmental projects have had to become more prioritised and outcome focused, quite often limiting projects to designated sites where they can contribute to often unrealistic organisational targets set by DEFRA. Even the limited funding streams that are left for priority sites may not be guaranteed, recently hearing that SSSI improvement, and Partnership and Innovation funds have been axed along with all of the planned in-year projects.
Other important environmental projects that 1) don’t hit (multiple) targets, or 2) are not on a ‘priority’ site, are left to the good will of staff, charities and voluntary sector – all of whom do a great job with limited resources. These sectors will have an ever increasing role in the future as government budgets dwindle.
So where does this leave us? The burden on the purse strings and strain on resources at Natural England (NE), Forestry Commission (FC) and Environment agency (EA) may be about to increase under DEFRA’s Species Control Provisions which were published for consultation 7th December 20152. The provisions will allow Secretary of State and the regulatory bodies listed above to take action against invasive non-native species, by issuing Species Control Orders to land owners forcing action by law.
It’s great that the Government is taking Invasive Non-native species (INNS) seriously, and so they must. A recent government strategy paper2 suggests that 10-15% of INNS in Great Britain cause significant adverse impacts, and estimates the economic impact to the UK at least £1.7 billion a year, with Japanese Knotweed making up £166 million of that. Impacts are not solely economic, these species have huge ecological impacts on our native fauna and flora; INNS prey on or out compete our native species and have the potential to spread disease.
So the importance of tacking Invasive non-native species in the UK is clear, actions will have economic, environmental and social benefits…but…and this is a big BUT…how is this going to be funded? Are we in the same position of trying to do more with less, and just how are just how are the regulatory body’s like Natural England going to cope when already under huge strain?
Stuart Morris
Surveyor – JKSL
I’m a fan of data. Ever since I learned how to make graphs on Excel at school, I have enjoyed playing about with spreadsheets and processing information.
It wasn’t long ago that I read this article about VisiCalc – the world’s first spreadsheet program.
From relatively humble beginnings, ‘Big data’ is all the rage nowadays, predicting all kinds of stuff like… I don’t know really… What temperature everyone’s central heating is at? What flavour of Pringles is most popular in Burnage? Exactly what time people start watching box sets on Sunday afternoon? Useful stuff like that.
Anyway, when I first arrived at Japanese Knotweed Solutions, one of the first things I did was to update our marketing statistics. What we had at the time was a lot of information, but not much ability to make sense of it. I worked through the data and produced a few key graphs which I could present to the directors on a weekly basis (many of them with £ signs).
This resulted in better understanding of seasonal variations in the business, better control of cash flow and crucially, an ability to identify which marketing expenses were bringing in trade, and which were not paying for themselves. This led to measurable improvements in the bottom line.
But data isn’t just about graphs and statistics.
I am very proud of Japanese Knotweed Solutions’ Job Tracking system, which I put in place in 2014.
This system has gradually been evolving new features and it now performs real-time monitoring of all of our site revisits to over 650 active sites, treatment reports for our clients and the status of every one of the thousands of sites we have treated over more than a decade. It also holds valuable data about insurance backed guarantees and Japanese knotweed treatments in different areas of the UK; growth patterns, application timings and treatment results. It basically tells our teams where to go, and when.
At some point in 2019, I predict it will become self-aware and try to nuke Japanese knotweed sites all over the country. But until then, it’s extremely useful.
I know that all sounds like a lot of confusing information, so here’s one very meaningful statistic:
I am very pleased to confirm that JKSL have visited every single one of our clients’ current sites over the 2015-16 season, including visits for winter clearance, as recommended in the EA Code of Practice
Chris Oliver
Operations Manager
Can you even begin to imagine what Darwin went through when he was coming up with his book ‘Origin of the Species”…?
Here we have a man who has spent years studying plants and animals and is pretty sure that God …doesn’t exist. This theory produced at a time when anyone guilty of such thoughts could have been not only laughed at but possibly tried and executed for blasphemy!
Darwin wrote to colleague (Hooker) in 1844 stating that he was …’convinced – quite contrary to the opinion that I started with – that species are not (it is like confessing to a murder) immutable’ …
Like… ‘confessing to a murder’…!
Imagine how he must have felt?
He was straying from the scientific orthodoxy of his day. This as time when the prevailing view was that God created the word in six days – and that the way plants adapted to their environment was simply further proof of a devine masterplan. To challenge this was to challenge the very foundation of Victorian society. It was to challenge God himself…not something to be done lightly.
Darwin’s grandfather had been publicly ridiculed for his ‘evolutionist’ views – his father Robert had similar ideas but kept quiet to avoid trouble. Now Charles found himself forced by the scientific evidence to tread the same path of heresy. He did this with caution – in fact his theories were first outlined in 1838 but took a further five years before even hinting at it in his letter to Hooker in 1844. Fifteen more years passed before his publication of his theory in ‘Origin of Species’.
Darwin spent much of those fifteen years accumulating an unassailable mountain of evidence to prove his ideas.
Now…I’m not suggesting that I have anything in common with Darwin…but…I have spent the last fifteen years accumulating a hell of a lot of evidence that we have a problem with invasive non-native species in the UK. …it may not be ‘heresy’ but it seems that the ‘powers that be’ just will not listen to the issues that we have.
Maybe I need to write a book – and call it…. ‘Origin of the Invasive Non Native Species’…..
Mike C
