My Lords, I declare a personal interest in rewilding, which goes back a very long way. I am a strong advocate of supporting species recovery and have been excited to see this issue catch on. I welcome my noble friend Lord Lucas’s interest. Well-managed releases of native species, including reintroductions of formerly native species, are a really important aspect of this. However, they can be complex and can carry risks, including for the animals themselves. The taking of animals from wild populations, or poor-quality breeding programmes and releases, can undermine conservation efforts. We should continue to work in a targeted way, under existing regulations which already make provision for the taking of protected wild animals under licence.
The Government are already taking positive steps to reintroduce and release native species, such as the pine marten in the Forest of Dean, which has been credited with reducing grey squirrel populations elsewhere, and the pool frog in Norfolk. I will take this opportunity to celebrate the wonderful work to reintroduce white-tailed eagles on the Isle of Wight in a project led by the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation supported by Forestry England. They released the first birds two years ago, and there were further releases last year, to local acclaim and excitement.
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A number of noble Lords have already mentioned the exciting developments with beavers in this country. I had the honour and privilege of being able to see areas that have been transformed already in England by beavers. It is really quite extraordinary: they have been described as nature’s gardeners and I can really see why, as they breathe life into an area and there is an absolute explosion in diversity of the sort that is very hard to predict. Their impact on the environment, have no doubt, will continue to be felt and will continue
to be enormously positive. I am thrilled that the Government are now looking positively at a fuller reintroduction programme for beavers. Long may that continue and grow.
It is not always the charismatic creatures; there has been a big focus on the reintroduction of lost insects, which I think we have talked about before in this House. Natural England has worked with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, the RSPB, farmers and landowners, and they have introduced the short-haired bumblebee in Dungeness. It is a project that has been so successful in creating extensive, quality habitat that other rare species, such as the moss carder bee, the brown-banded carder bee and the ruderal bumblebee have also started to spread to areas where they have not been recorded for, in some cases, up to 40 years. There are many benefits from careful and thoughtful reintroductions.
We have announced the creation of a species reintroduction taskforce. This will bring together experts and stakeholders to prioritise, share knowledge, find consensus and build collaborative projects towards a more ambitious approach to recovering iconic species in England. I take this opportunity to commend Citizen Zoo and its volunteers for their work promoting rewilding and particularly for their recent success in releasing around 1,000 large marsh grasshoppers in East Anglia.
My noble friend Lord Lucas rightly talked about the importance of nature corridors. We absolutely recognise the importance of improving connectivity between habitats. To this end, the Bill lays the foundation, as noble Lords know, for the nature recovery network. This will create a bigger, better-quality and increasingly connected network of places that are richer in wildlife and support the recovery of species affected by habitat fragmentation. One of the really exciting parts of our tree programme is a package of incentives for landowners in whose land there is moving water, whether that is streams or rivers, to rewild or plant up either side of those waterways, with a view to creating a network of natural corridors potentially linking up the whole country. This will also help to deal with flood risk and to purify the water that makes its way into our waterways. There is a lot of good stuff happening.
Moving on to Amendment 253, this is an issue that has generated a lot of interest, as my noble friend knows. I sympathise very much with the intent behind the amendment, but there are no plans to change the regulations regarding fallen stock. That is because the rules are obviously an important part of our disease prevention strategy, there to ensure that the UK maintains its high animal health status nationally and globally. The risk, as others have said, is that fallen stock has the potential to pose a risk of disease to farmed animals, wild animals and the public as well. This is something that would need to be looked at with great caution.
The Government continue to support the creation of wilder landscapes as part of our broader approach to nature recovery. As part of the 25-year environment plan, the Government will provide opportunities for the reintroduction of formerly native species. I am happy to write to my noble friend with much more detail on that. In the meantime, I ask him to withdraw his amendment.