Independent report

ESRT: Year 1 review and look forward to 2024

Published 1 May 2024

Applies to England

The England Species Reintroduction Taskforce was fully established at its first meeting in February 2023. We are an independent expert technical advisory panel comprising academics from a variety of disciplines, landowners and land managers, statutory bodies and environmental non-governmental organisations. The secretariat function is provided by Natural England, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) are represented by an observer. We publish our terms of reference, meeting minutes and other significant communications on the England Species Reintroductions Taskforce – GOV.UK page. In addition, we are presenting a series of blogs through the Natural England blog site.

The England Species Reintroduction Taskforce began life just in time to contribute to the parliamentary Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee inquiry into Species Reintroductions. Our chair, Dr Andy Clements, presented both written and oral evidence to the committee. The committee’s report was published in July 2023 and the government responded in November 2023 having approached the England Species Reintroduction Taskforce for its views on the response.

Meetings

In line with our intention to establish momentum we held 6 meetings in the first year, 4 face-to-face and 2 online. In keeping with our wish to balance consideration of conservation translocations across the widest diversity of taxa, we held meetings at:

• the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
• the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust at Slimbridge
• the David Attenborough Building at the Cambridge Conservation Initiative

This enabled us to hear presentations on:

• the propagation and translocation of Lady’s Slipper Orchid
• head-starting work to assist the conservation of Curlew and Spoon-billed Sandpiper
• a project to re-establish Burbot in the Wensum river catchment

Our final meeting of our first year was held at the University of York in February 2024. There, we heard a presentation on ‘Conservation translocations – some international experience and emerging issues’ from Martin Gaywood, NatureScot and secretariat of the Scotland’s National Species Reintroduction Forum.

Advisory work

A key objective of the England Species Reintroduction Taskforce’s work is to offer guidance and advice to ensure that more and better conservation translocations contribute optimally to nature’s recovery. Early work has scoped a range of issues where we are likely to provide expert guidance.

The current guidance documents that should be followed when conservation translocations are being considered are:

• the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reintroduction and translocation guidelines, produced in 2013
• the Defra reintroductions and conservation translocations code, produced in 2021

However, it is clear that the valuable insights and structured approaches to cover all necessary considerations contained in these guidance documents are not being used enough. We have commissioned a study to examine the barriers to more and better translocations, to ensure that the guidelines and code become better known and understood. We hope this will lead to proposals for conservation translocations that follow best practice and are more likely to be successful. The results of this work will be published during the second half of 2024.

The UK is a seriously nature-depleted country and one component of this is a paucity of apex predators. A second significant commission underway is to examine the ecological and socio-economic consequences of re-establishing the full predator guild in England. Following an open call for expressions of interest, the work is being undertaken by a team led by the University of York. This work is overseen by one of the England Species Reintroduction Taskforce members, Dr Julia Touza, supported by a sounding board of other England Species Reintroduction Taskforce members. This study will report by the end of 2024.

Accessing knowledge about the scope, progress and outcomes of conservation translocations in England is currently a haphazard and ad hoc process. Natural England curate the best information at present, as part of their broader species recovery work. The England Species Reintroduction Taskforce has now started a project to design and make available a repository of information about the status of conservation translocation proposals and projects across England. The purpose will be to encourage the fullest sharing of knowledge and enable project proposers to learn from the experiences of others whether they were ultimately successful or not.

Stakeholders

As with any new initiative, it is important to establish a profile with those who wish to engage with our work. We have so far held 3 stakeholder events focused on different sectors of the community with an interest in species reintroductions:

• invertebrate specialists facilitated by England Species Reintroduction Taskforce member Dr Karim Vahed from Buglife
• landowners and land managers and their representative bodies facilitated by England Species Reintroduction Taskforce members Martin Lines from the Nature Friendly Farming Network and Jake Fiennes from Holkham Estate, Norfolk
• Jim Foster from Amphibian and Reptile Conservation looking at issues for herptile conservation

All meetings have been extremely useful in being able to explain what the England Species Reintroduction Taskforce work actually is, and what it is not. They have also been useful to hear the views, opinions and concerns of our stakeholders so we can address them together as we make progress.

Our chair has presented to a range of interested parties including the Nature Conservation Working Group of the UK Environmental Law Association. He has also been interviewed by The Guardian on the work of the England Species Reintroduction Taskforce.

Future plans

In the coming year the England Species Reintroduction Taskforce will hold 4 face-to-face meetings including visits to translocation projects underway. We will aim for the meetings to be themed around key topics where the stakeholder community need guidance and advice from the England Species Reintroduction Taskforce. Topics might include:

• what is meant by ‘native’
• a response to unlawful reintroductions or those that do not follow the 2021 Defra code
• exploring the opportunities and challenges of assisted colonisation

We have 3 further stakeholder sessions planned for 2024 with:

• plant specialists
• government bodies including the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (and the devolved country statutory nature conservation bodies)
• zoos and collections that are leading captive-breeding research and practice as a contribution to re-establishing rare species in the wild

The England Species Reintroduction Taskforce will develop a communications plan, establishing a stronger online presence by using appropriate social media. We will publish the findings of the 2 key studies outlined above and commission further pieces of advice and guidance. The online repository of information will have initial functionality during the year. We will attend a range of others’ meetings to share information about our work and invite guest blogs from interested stakeholders.

21 March 2024