Farmers are struggling everywhere but at the moment they are able to help preserve wildlife, which many want to anyway, due to funding from the European Union, which devotes a proportion of its support to preserving wild areas and endangered species.
This could all change, and many species could become extinct, including several British birds, if proposed changes to the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy go ahead.
The president of the EU Council, Herman van Rompuy, is pushing for alterations to the rules which would allow countries to devote more rural development money to food production, and a lot less to conservation.
Food production is not a priority in Europe, more than enough is produced already, but conservation is. The loss of biodiversity could be catastrophic in environmental, social and even economic terms.
Tell EU leaders not to allow this backwards plan to go through.
We the undersigned ask that you not allow proposed alterations to the Common Agricultural Policy which would allow countries to devote a third less rural development money to the preservation of biodiversity.
As many farmers are struggling to make a living already, many could not continue to help preserve countryside wildlife with less support. Biodiversity is important in its own right, brings in tourist money – for example from bird watchers – and has an intrinsic human importance. Allowing yet more wildlife to disappear for the sake of a short sighted economic ideal is not the way Europe should be going.
Europe sees itself, sometimes with good cause, as the world’s leader in sustainability. Preserving the remaining wildlife is a key part of this.
We ask that you do everything in your power to ensure that this reduction in the support for natural heritage does not go ahead.
Thank you for your attention.
