Species Recovery

2. Questions to the Minister for Rural Affairs and North Wales, and Trefnydd – in the Senedd on 9 March 2022.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mark Isherwood Mark Isherwood Conservative

(Translated)

5. What role will the sustainable farming scheme play in species recovery? OQ57743

Photo of Lesley Griffiths Lesley Griffiths Labour 2:51, 9 March 2022

Thank you. Responding to the nature emergency is a key objective of our proposed sustainable farming scheme. Future farm support will reward farmers who take action to maintain and create resilient ecosystems. This will help create the conditions that will enable species recovery at farm and landscape scale.

Photo of Mark Isherwood Mark Isherwood Conservative

In a written response to me from the Minister for Climate Change six weeks ago, she said,

'Longer term, the Sustainable Farming Scheme will be an important mechanism and source of funding to address habitat loss and species decline, including some of our iconic farmland birds such as the curlew. Representations from the Gylfinir Cymru Partnership will be considered by the Minister for Rural Affairs, North Wales and Trefnydd as the Sustainable Farming Scheme is developed.'

But, with country-level extinction by 2033 threatened, I hope you'd agree that we don't have time to wait. As it's going to take the best part of a decade for the Wales-wide roll-out of the sustainable farming scheme, how will this help restore populations of rare and vulnerable species like curlew, which need urgent action now if we're not to lose them from Wales? And can the Minister confirm her acceptance of Gylfinir Cymru's request for an on-site meeting with farmers, land managers and Gylfinir Cymru partners to discuss curlew recovery, the wider multiple and multispecies benefits provided, and potentially support policy development like the sustainable farming scheme?

Photo of Lesley Griffiths Lesley Griffiths Labour 2:52, 9 March 2022

Thank you. Well, as we are already in the middle of a climate and nature emergency, you're quite right that we don't have time to play with. So, I wouldn't want people to think we were just waiting for the sustainable farming scheme to come in relation to protecting our species, and the Member will be very well aware of many schemes that now sit within the Minister for Climate Change's portfolio—the sustainable management scheme, for instance, which is already improving the resilience of our ecosystems, it's enhancing our biodiversity, and of course it's tackling climate change. There's been significant funding—I think it's about £235 million—already gone into around 50 projects across Wales. We've also got the national peatland action programme, which is helping increase the ecosystem resilience of our Welsh peatland. So, what the sustainable farming scheme will be looking at is the good practice from these schemes and building on that. 

Whoops! There was an error.
Whoops \ Exception \ ErrorException (E_CORE_WARNING)
Module 'xapian' already loaded Whoops\Exception\ErrorException thrown with message "Module 'xapian' already loaded" Stacktrace: #2 Whoops\Exception\ErrorException in Unknown:0 #1 Whoops\Run:handleError in /data/vhost/matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/theyworkforyou/vendor/filp/whoops/src/Whoops/Run.php:433 #0 Whoops\Run:handleShutdown in [internal]:0
Stack frames (3)
2
Whoops\Exception\ErrorException
Unknown0
1
Whoops\Run handleError
/vendor/filp/whoops/src/Whoops/Run.php433
0
Whoops\Run handleShutdown
[internal]0
Unknown
/data/vhost/matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/theyworkforyou/vendor/filp/whoops/src/Whoops/Run.php
    /**
     * Special case to deal with Fatal errors and the like.
     */
    public function handleShutdown()
    {
        // If we reached this step, we are in shutdown handler.
        // An exception thrown in a shutdown handler will not be propagated
        // to the exception handler. Pass that information along.
        $this->canThrowExceptions = false;
 
        $error = $this->system->getLastError();
        if ($error && Misc::isLevelFatal($error['type'])) {
            // If there was a fatal error,
            // it was not handled in handleError yet.
            $this->allowQuit = false;
            $this->handleError(
                $error['type'],
                $error['message'],
                $error['file'],
                $error['line']
            );
        }
    }
 
    /**
     * In certain scenarios, like in shutdown handler, we can not throw exceptions
     * @var bool
     */
    private $canThrowExceptions = true;
 
    /**
     * Echo something to the browser
     * @param  string $output
     * @return $this
     */
    private function writeToOutputNow($output)
    {
        if ($this->sendHttpCode() && \Whoops\Util\Misc::canSendHeaders()) {
            $this->system->setHttpResponseCode(
                $this->sendHttpCode()
[internal]

Environment & details:

Key Value
type senedd
id 2022-03-09.3.413737
s representation NOT taxation speaker:26249 speaker:26190 speaker:26175 speaker:26175 speaker:26170 speaker:26170 speaker:26190 speaker:26190 speaker:26190 speaker:26190 speaker:26190
empty
empty
empty
empty
Key Value
PATH /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
PHPRC /etc/php/7.0/fcgi
PWD /data/vhost/matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/theyworkforyou/www/docs/fcgi
PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN 0
ORIG_SCRIPT_NAME /fcgi/php-basic-dev
ORIG_PATH_TRANSLATED /data/vhost/matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/docs/section.php
ORIG_PATH_INFO /senedd/
ORIG_SCRIPT_FILENAME /data/vhost/matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/docs/fcgi/php-basic-dev
CONTENT_LENGTH 0
SCRIPT_NAME /senedd/
REQUEST_URI /senedd/?id=2022-03-09.3.413737&s=representation+NOT+taxation+speaker%3A26249+speaker%3A26190+speaker%3A26175+speaker%3A26175+speaker%3A26170+speaker%3A26170+speaker%3A26190+speaker%3A26190+speaker%3A26190+speaker%3A26190+speaker%3A26190
QUERY_STRING type=senedd&id=2022-03-09.3.413737&s=representation+NOT+taxation+speaker%3A26249+speaker%3A26190+speaker%3A26175+speaker%3A26175+speaker%3A26170+speaker%3A26170+speaker%3A26190+speaker%3A26190+speaker%3A26190+speaker%3A26190+speaker%3A26190
REQUEST_METHOD GET
SERVER_PROTOCOL HTTP/1.0
GATEWAY_INTERFACE CGI/1.1
REDIRECT_QUERY_STRING type=senedd&id=2022-03-09.3.413737&s=representation+NOT+taxation+speaker%3A26249+speaker%3A26190+speaker%3A26175+speaker%3A26175+speaker%3A26170+speaker%3A26170+speaker%3A26190+speaker%3A26190+speaker%3A26190+speaker%3A26190+speaker%3A26190
REDIRECT_URL /senedd/
REMOTE_PORT 42890
SCRIPT_FILENAME /data/vhost/matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/docs/section.php
SERVER_ADMIN webmaster@theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org
CONTEXT_DOCUMENT_ROOT /data/vhost/matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/docs
CONTEXT_PREFIX
REQUEST_SCHEME http
DOCUMENT_ROOT /data/vhost/matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/docs
REMOTE_ADDR 3.144.114.109
SERVER_PORT 80
SERVER_ADDR 46.235.230.113
SERVER_NAME matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org
SERVER_SOFTWARE Apache
SERVER_SIGNATURE
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING gzip, br, zstd, deflate
HTTP_USER_AGENT Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)
HTTP_ACCEPT */*
HTTP_CONNECTION close
HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO https
HTTP_X_REAL_IP 3.144.114.109
HTTP_HOST matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org
SCRIPT_URI http://matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/senedd/
SCRIPT_URL /senedd/
REDIRECT_STATUS 200
REDIRECT_HANDLER application/x-httpd-fastphp
REDIRECT_SCRIPT_URI http://matthew.theyworkforyou.dev.mysociety.org/senedd/
REDIRECT_SCRIPT_URL /senedd/
FCGI_ROLE RESPONDER
PHP_SELF /senedd/
REQUEST_TIME_FLOAT 1731635075.7131
REQUEST_TIME 1731635075
empty
0. Whoops\Handler\PrettyPageHandler