4 2GM Monday January 3 2022 | the times
News
Leading conservation charities have
written to Boris Johnson urging him to
make a series of new year’s resolutions
to tackle the nature and climate crises.
The National Trust, RSPB, Wood-
land Trust and the Wildlife Trusts have
joined forces to call for urgent action
that builds on the promises made at
Cop26 in Glasgow.
They are asking the government to
make seven commitments this year,
focusing on protecting and restoring
peatlands, paying farmers to restore
nature, and additional measures to
protect marine environments. They are
also calling for an immediate ban on the
use of peat for horticultural purposes in
the professional and amateur sectors,
and a ban on burning upland peat.
It is hoped that the pledges will help
the government to reach net zero emis-
sions by 2050 and halt the catastrophic
decline in nature by protecting and
providing new homes for wildlife.
Darren Moorcroft, chief executive of
Charities join forces in call
for green pledges from PM
Woodland Trust, said Britain needed to
show leadership on the international
stage by providing “decisive action, set-
ting clear targets to restore nature, and
working with land managers to create
tree-rich, resilient landscapes for
people, nature and carbon”.
Craig Bennett, chief executive of the
Wildlife Trusts, said that there was a
huge gulf between rhetoric and reality
on tackling climate change. He added:
“We urgently need to cut carbon emis-
sions deeper and faster and ensure
nature recovers across 30 per cent of
land and sea by the end of the decade.
“The UK needs to ban new coal
mines, set an end date for oil and gas
exploration and production, put great-
er investment in nature restoration,
and ensure agricultural and fishing
industries are supported so that they
can help solve rather than worsen the
nature and climate crises. We cannot
afford to fail future generations and the
planet through lack of action.”
The charities’ letter states that the
pact made in Glasgow must bedeveloped and built upon before next
year’s Cop27 in Egypt, and the conven-
tion on biological diversity in China in
April. The proposed resolutions include
restoring peatlands, by far the country’s
largest natural carbon sink but which,
due to their degraded state, are emitting
carbon into the atmosphere.
The Office for National Statistics has
estimated that restoring all UK peat-
lands to near-natural condition would
deliver emissions benefits worth
£109 billion, outweighing the costs by
five to ten times.
The charities also call for a long-
promised ban on the use of peat for
horticultural purposes “as a matter of
urgency”, along with an immediate ban
on burning upland peat.
Among the seven suggestions is that
all seagrass habitats should be given
highly protected status. “Fishing
practices that disturb the seabed, which
sequesters carbon and supports marine
life, must be reduced,” they said.
Energy secretary courted oil bosses
after Cop26, page 31Will Humphries
Conspiracy
theorists turn
to climate
Kaya Burgess Science ReporterGroups spreading misinformation
about Covid-19 are starting to use the
same language to spread conspiracy
theories about climate change, experts
have warned.
Covid conspiracy theorists are using
terms such as “green lockdowns”, ana-
lysts at the Institute for Strategic Dia-
logue have noted. The term refers to the
belief that, in future, people will be reg-
ularly forced to stay at home and re-
strict their social contacts to reduce
carbon emissions and tackle climate
change. There is no evidence for such
claims.
Protests have been held across the
UK and globally in which demonstra-
tors have railed against measures intro-
duced to reduce the spread of Covid.
The protesters claimed that the manda-
tory wearing of facemasks in shops or
on trains, the imposition of lockdowns
and the prospect of Covid “passports”
breached their civil liberties.
Ciaran O’Connor, an analyst at the
Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said:
“Green lockdowns is a term that’s ban-
died about in these conspiracy commu-
nities. That’s a merging of Covid worlds
and climate disinformation worlds.”
He said that these groups would try
to “frame” measures to tackle climate
change in a similar way: as a “loss of civil
liberties and loss of freedoms”.
O’Connor said that such conspiracy
theorists are increasingly turning away
from mainstream social media sites,
warning: “Telegram has become the
platform of choice for far-right, ex-
treme right-wing groups, for conspira-
cy communities [and] for extremist
communities in general.” Telegram did
not respond to a request for comment.The tide has turned Surfers at Roker Beach, near Sunderland, made the most of unseasonably warm new year weather yesterday, but those days are over and the first
week of 2022 will be dominated by thunderstorms, heavy rain and wintry conditions across Britain. Today there will be hill snow in the north Full forecast, page 45
A Tory animal welfare group is calling
for the use of animal-based scents to be
banned during trail hunting.
MPs who belong to the Conservative
Animal Welfare Foundation, whose
patron is Carrie Johnson, the prime
minister’s wife, will put forward an
amendment to the Animal Welfare Bill.
Under the proposed amendment,
those laying such scents for hounds to
follow would potentially be jailed.
Tory MPs lobby for hunting scent ban
Sir Roger Gale said the laws on hunt-
ing do not go far enough and put foxes
at risk of being torn apart by hounds.
“There is no logical reason for the
recreational sport of trail hunting to
continue to use animal-based scents if
the hunt seriously and genuinely wish-
es to avoid accidentally chasing or kill-
ing a fox,” he told The Sunday Telegraph.
Last year a leading huntsman was
convicted of encouraging others to hide
the illegal killing of foxes behind a
“smokescreen” of trail hunting.When the hunting of mammals using
dogs was made illegal in the UK in
2005, packs invented a new sport of
trail hunting, which is supposed to
mimic traditional hunting by following
a fox-based scent trail laid by runners or
horse riders ahead of the pack.
Countryside groups have criticised
the proposal. Tim Bonner, chief
executive of the Countryside Alliance,
said: “It would do nothing to stop the
few unfortunate cases where hounds
do chase mammals.”Will Humphries
Bond star’s charity turn
Daniel Craig has been secretly
helping a charity that patrols
suicide hotspots across north
Lincolnshire, including the
Humber Bridge. The James Bond
star has made donations to The
Bearded Fisherman, helping them
buy life-saving equipment. Rick
Roberts, co-founder of the charity
based in Gainsborough, said: “His
support will go a long way.”Whitehall erases data
Most government departments
will wipe all texts and other data
from mobile phones if users enter
the wrong password too many
times, freedom of information
requests showed. The practice
came under scrutiny last year
during the Greensill lobbying
scandal. Critics say it could give
unscrupulous public servants a
way to delete evidence.Scooter crash kills man
A 74-year-old man died after the
electric scooter he was riding
collided with two parked cars at
lunchtime on Saturday in
Droylsden, Greater Manchester.
The police said that no arrests
had been made, but they have
appealed for witnesses to come
forward and have asked drivers
for dashcam footage. The man
has yet to be named.Perils of lockdown
Getting outside for fresh air in
lockdown proved a health hazard
for some of us. Figures from NHS
Digital show 5,300 people needed
hospital treatment after falling off
playground equipment, 349 had a
run-in with a lawnmower and
962 were injured climbing trees
in 2020/21. An unlucky 18 had
been struck by lightning, up from
three in the previous year.East coast hit by bird flu
More cases of bird flu have been
confirmed in Lincolnshire as
England faces its largest ever
outbreak of the virus. Exclusion
zones have been put in place at
sites near Mablethorpe, Alford
and South Elkington, in addition
to two near Pocklington, in East
Yorkshire. There have been 60
confirmed cases in England since
November, with the first reported
in Lincolnshire on December 11.
The main source of infection is
from migratory birds but bird flu
can spread on clothes.CCCDDDE E
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ILMNNOOP
PPRRTTUUSolve all five clues using each
letter underneath once only1 Duct for smoke, eg (4)2 Moralistic killjoy (5)3 Place one’s trust (in) as a friend (7)4 Vie (7)5 Instructive past case (9)Quintagram®No 1202
Solutions MindGames in Times
Cryptic clues every day onlineGREG BUTLER/BAV MEDIA