Eustice told lawmakers that the Habitats Directive was on a list of laws he wanted to amend in the upcoming Brexit freedoms bill designed to reduce bureaucracy, saying it was bureaucratic and fundamentally flawed on many levels. The directive has been providing protection for UK habitats since 1992. It supports a network of sites – known as Natura 2000 sites – where special habitats are protected. There are more than 320 Natura 2000 sites in the UK, almost 900 in the UK and more than 25,000 across Europe. Subscribe to the First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7 p.m. BST Sites offer more protection than domestic names, sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs). Regulations have been used on many occasions to provide greater protection for habitats and species. They also force developers who are allowed to continue their work to replace habitats under a legally binding compensation system. The Steart Marshes, a 20 20.7 million wetland reserve, has been set up in Somerset to offset the loss of habitat at the Severn Estuary, a Natura 2000 site, as a result of flood protection. Eustice, however, told members of the Environment Committee that the habitat regulations would be on a list of laws he wanted to amend when given the legal authority to do so under the Freedoms Bill. “The more we look at this body of law, the clearer it becomes that it is fundamentally flawed. It is only involved when an activity is defined as a project or project, so if something needs a permit or design permit, habitat regulations are involved and begin to require evaluation. “An activity that is not licensed in some way suddenly goes out of scope and is not involved in the process,” he said. He went on to say that the regulations were “very ambiguous” and bureaucratic, requiring “many impact assessments to be drafted”. They contained “well-intentioned ambitions to protect the environment,” but they did not, he said. The Green Paper on Nature, published by the Eustice section, argues that slate sweeping and excavation of habitat jurisprudence and regulation rules would help simplify the planning process. Richard Benwell, CEO of Wildlife and Countryside Link, criticized what he said was a regressive and destabilizing move by Eustice. “Habitat regulations are not an inconvenient level of legal process for steak, nor some costly bureaucracy that can simply be cut,” he said. “They remain the most effective nature conservation in the UK Statute, providing a rigorous defense against internationally important wildlife, in a way that gives confidence and confidence to businesses and environmentalists.” Benwell said there are ways in which regulations could be improved, including greater flexibility for climate change, wider application to harmful projects and even greater protection against adverse developments. “But simply repealing habitat regulations with the false assumption that other domestic laws can do the job on their own would be a serious step backwards in nature conservation, as well as costly delays and uncertainty,” he said. “The most important thing Defra could do for our network of natural sites is to go up and down more and invest properly in their recovery.”
