6. Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: Biodiversity

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:13 pm on 4 October 2022.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 5:13, 4 October 2022

And the wolves. It's really important to understand what the ecosystem you're looking at now looks like and what is currently controlling that. What is the substitute for the apex predator? It's more complicated, isn't it, than that, because there will be other methodologies. Things move into the space vacated by an apex predator, for example. But it's really interesting—watch the Yellowstone programme—because we have removed all the apex predators from a large part of our wildlife, so what is going to control the population explosion of things that would otherwise have been predated? That's a real issue.

The other issue is that where we are trying to protect a species that has been overpredated, there is a really difficult conversation about how to do that. Lethal control, as it's euphemistically called—killing the apex predator because it's eating the ground-nesting bird chicks, and so on—is very controversial. We do do that in some parts of Wales. So, looking to see whether we've got the right solution to a problem is something I'm really keen to do, and I am not an expert in that. I need to ask people for advice about that. There is a range of views about that. We've had some heated discussions in these groups, I can tell you. But trying to hit on a solution that most people across the globe, not just in Wales, agree is the solution is really important, Mike. So, we're working hard to do that. And we have to do that with our land managers and our landowners, don't we? We have to understand what that looks like for them. So, there are lots of people working on that. 

I launched this report at the National Botanic Garden of Wales yesterday. They have—I can't remember what they call it now—a hawk programme there, though that's not what they call it, but a predator bird programme there. That's amazing, and if you talk to them about how they reintroduced those into the landscape, that's also amazing. So, they know what acreage of landscape will support one tawny owl, for example. So, they know where they can and can't introduce more, because they would just fight or starve or whatever it is. So, it's really interesting, and there's lots of work across Wales and across the globe going on on that. 

On the other point that you made, about the river pollutants, absolutely. I don't want to be a harbinger of doom all the time, though. We could go faster, don't get me wrong, and we could do better, but slowly they are still improving. I don't want people to come away with the idea that rivers are actually de-improving in Wales. Some of our rivers are in crisis, real crisis, but actually over the whole picture in Wales there is a slow improvement. What I have been asked to do as part of the deep-dive outcome is accelerate that, understand why that's worked in some areas and accelerate it, and get it out into the areas where we have real crisis like the Wye and the Usk, for example, or what's called the Brecon supercatchment. So, the point that I'm making, Mike, is that we know what works in some areas; we need to accelerate it across the piece. And I go back to what I said in response to Delyth, Llywydd: that cannot happen unless every single part of our community plays its part. There's no point in pointing fingers at people and saying, 'It's your fault', or 'It's your fault'; each player has to play its part in getting down its contribution to that pollution.