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

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have for integrating citizen science into current environmental monitoring frameworks.

Citizen Science is highly integrated into Defra group’s environmental monitoring frameworks and provides vital evidence to deliver nature’s recovery.

The Environment Agency is encouraging citizen science use as part of an integrated evidence base. It works with partners to facilitate the use of citizen science data where it will add most value, such as in monitoring the water environment.

Meanwhile, Natural England is leading non-governmental and third sector organisations to develop collaborative monitoring across national frameworks and local decision-making, aligning volunteer, organisational and technological contributions to meet needs.

The Joint Nature Conservation Committee supports and jointly funds UK-wide long-term biodiversity monitoring, focusing on bats, birds, butterflies, vascular plants, and pollinators. All these schemes make extensive use of Citizen Science to provide a cost effective, yet high quality, signal of change.