Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to protect critically endangered species in the UK.

Legal protection for our most threatened native species is already provided by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulation 2017.

Defra is committed to taking action to recover our endangered native species. Through the Environment Act 2021, we have set four legally binding targets for biodiversity in England : to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030; then to reverse declines by 2042; to reduce the risk of species extinction by 2042; and restore or create more than 500,000 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat, also by 2042. We have set out our plan to deliver on these ambitious targets, along with our other environmental targets, in the revised Environmental Improvement Plan published 31^st January 2023.

Our new Environmental Land Management schemes will pay for sustainable farming practices, creating and preserving habitat such as woodland, heathland, and species-rich grassland, as well as making landscape-scale environmental changes, all of which support species recovery. Additionally, Natural England recently launched the Species Recovery Programme Capital Grant Scheme which will provide targeted funding to reversing the decline of England’s most threatened species.