June 7 this year should have been a milestone in nature conservation history — the Government launched the first White Paper on the Natural Environment in over 20 years, an opportunity to set out a clear policy to stop the decline in wildlife across England.

As ever with new policy announcements the detail that follows them is as important as the headlines themselves. So now we’ve had a month for the proposals to settle in, it is a good time to ask: will it bring about the major shift in approach that we at the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust were calling for and what are the implications for the countryside in Oxfordshire?

The aspiration of the white paper is beautifully clear. It starts out by saying that the Government wants us to be the first generation to leave the natural environment in a better state than we inherited. Such a simple statement belies the multitude of problems that have conspired to make our wild birds, bees and other insects, and our flower meadows, slowly disappear over the preceding decades. More importantly though, the paper sets out a strategy for reversing some of that decline. It has grasped a key message that the Wildlife Trusts nationally, together with other environmental charities, have been highlighting for a long time: that the few protected areas in our countryside need to be better managed, and linked together to form a network. They propose to do this by getting local authorities to identify a network of Nature Improvement Areas. Not only have we been recommending this approach, across the south-east wildlife organisations have already worked together to identify such a network. The work also started here in Oxfordshire, through a project run by the Oxfordshire Nature Conservation Forum. Together with the local environmental records centre, TVERC, and a host of partners, the group has identified ‘Conservation Target Areas’. In Oxfordshire planners have been including these areas in local plans — not as somewhere where development is not allowed, but as areas where there are the best opportunities to link together wildlife habitats.

Work has already been happening on the ground in Oxfordshire too. Our own Chimney Meadows nature reserve near Bampton is a clear example of the idea — we expanded an existing 50ha of wildlife-rich habitat to create a much larger, more stable, 250ha site. But it’s not just environmental charities that have been doing this — by far the bulk of the habitat restoration in Oxfordshire has been carried out by private farmers and land managers, with funding and guidance from Natural England, the Government’s conservation advisors.

With so much already going on, it begs the question of whether the Government’s new policy adds to that work, or detracts from it. The answer is not simple. There are some clear downsides — although they propose a network of Nature Improvement Areas, like the 30-odd already identified in Oxfordshire, they have only found funding to run 12 pilot projects nationally over the next four years.

There is a real concern that these pilots might pull resources away from areas where there is already good work going on.

I’m sure Oxfordshire will make a good case for one of the pilot projects to run in our patch. We have such iconic landscapes as the Thames Valley, the Chiltern Hills and the Lambourn Downs, all with their own special wildlife. But with only 12 projects across the whole of England, success is not guaranteed.

In the meantime, we need to make sure that the focus on these areas doesn’t damage the hard work that is already going on to achieve the white paper’s aspirations in Oxfordshire.

If you would like to find out more about your local wildlife trust, become a member, or be part of our Living Landscapes work please go to www.bbowt.org.uk or tel. 01865 775476.