Join in and show you care about our wildlife

If you watch a wildlife TV documentary or use the Internet to identify a flower the chances are you care enough about the natural environment enough to want to defend it.

We have just three weeks to tell the European Commission how much we care about very special natural places for wildlife here in Oxfordshire and across Europe.

Awesome landscapes such as the Cairngorms, the lakes and marshes of the Danube Delta, and ancient beech forests in Bavaria have been protected by the EU Habitats Directive since 1992.

The Directive is protecting parts of the Oxfordshire countryside and its wildlife too.

The Oxford Meadows (including Port Meadow), chalk grasslands in the Chilterns, Cothill Fen near Abingdon, and Little Wittenham Wood near Didcot are designated Special Areas of Conservation under the Habitats Directive.

This gives them protection for their special, and in some cases unique, habitats that support animals, birds and plants, that cannot thrive elsewhere.

Now the European Commission is conducting a Fitness Check of the Habitats Directive and the Birds Directive which creates Special Protection Areas, to assess if they are fit for purpose and fulfilling their objectives.

The Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust, along with all Wildlife Trusts and more than 100 nature organisations believe that these two Nature Directives are worthwhile.

We’ve already responded to the European Commission, now it’s time for people who care about the natural environment to respond too.

It’s easy to visit the Wildlife Trusts’ website wildlifetrusts.org/defendnature and complete the short questionnaire. There’s also a link to the EC web pages where the reasons for carrying out the Fitness Check are given in detail.

The Habitats Directive gives protection to around 1,200 European species other than birds, which are considered endangered, vulnerable and rare. These include fish, insects, plants, reptiles and mammals.

The aim of the Directive is for populations of these species to be conserved in such numbers within the EU so they are not at risk of extinction.

The species local to us include: otters, dormice, water voles, southern damselflies, great-crested newts and monkey orchids.

The Oxford Meadows alongside the River Thames west and north of Oxford are designated because of the floodplain grasslands that used to be widespread across England, but are now limited to a few areas that have not been ploughed, drained or fertilised. The Wildlife Trust’s Oxey Mead nature reserve lies within Oxford Meadows.

Chalk grasslands in the Chilterns, such as the Trust’s Hartslock nature reserve, provide the perfect conditions for monkey orchids, so rare that they are only found in a handful of sites in southern England.

The coincidence of sand and chalk soils at Cothill near Abingdon has led to the amazingly rich wildlife habitats that support species such as the southern damselfly on the Trust’s suite of nature reserves including Parsonage Moor.

Little Wittenham Wood is also protected because it supports one of the best-studied populations of great-crested newts, a species that has declined massively across Europe, but is relatively widespread in the clay areas of southern Britain.

The Birds Directive is complementary to the Habitats Directive and covers species that thrive in the special habitats such as the heathlands of southern England.

In 2005 the EU made the Thames Basin Heaths, a Special Protection Area, due to the populations of woodlark, nightjar and Dartford warbler.

The Birds Directive is doing its job of protecting the Thames Basin Heaths and its wildlife from destruction, while making new areas available for people to enjoy being in the countryside.

In Oxfordshire, just 768 hectares of countryside is protected in the same way, that’s only 0.3% of the total land area. So if you care about the natural environment, please defend nature today, by responding to the EU consultation before Friday, July 24.

* Defend Nature today wildlifetrusts.org/defendnature