Mike Thornton has recently joined the Balanced Horizon team as a full-time Senior Landscape Ecologist for our Muir to Forth programme. As a resident and specialist on the East Lothian landscape he brings considerable local knowledge. He also brings over three decades of nature conservation experience to this role having worked in the voluntary, government and private sectors.
I have been working in nature conservation for over thirty years, primarily in Scotland including locally in East Lothian. When I first started working in the sector – for conservation charities such as the RSPB, Scottish Wildlife Trust and National Trust – nature conservation policy focussed on the designation of protected areas to defend semi-natural habitats and species populations against damaging development pressures and land use changes. This approach was enshrined in the statute books through the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act (1949) and the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981), which established a network of statutory designated sites such as National Nature Reserves (NNRs) and Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs). These sites were intended to cover a representative cross-section of semi-natural habitats and species. Alongside domestic legislation, the EU passed the Habitats and Birds Directive, which was translated into domestic legislation through the Habitats regulations. This created a network of Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and Special Protection Areas (SPAs) providing the highest level of statutory protection for nature in the UK.
However, these policies to protect approximately 20% of Scotland’s land area have had minimal impact on addressing the wider trend of declining nature and biodiversity over my lifetime. The latest State of Nature Report (2023) for Scotland reported that 11% of all species assessed in Scotland are classified as threatened with extinction – that’s roughly 1 in 9 species. Alongside the trend in biodiversity loss, our climate has warmed by an average of 0.25 degrees per decade since the 1980s. It is now accepted that the biodiversity crisis and climate crisis are strongly interlinked. In effect, we cannot combat the climate crisis without addressing the biodiversity crisis. As such, nature restoration across land and sea must play a vitally important role towards combating climate change with fully functioning and restored habitats able to draw down and lock-up significant amounts of atmospheric carbon.
Considering the perilous state of nature in Scotland, it is no longer sufficient to simply defend nature from development pressures in isolated nature reserves and protected sites. Governments, charities, businesses and communities must work together to actively restore nature at the landscape scale if we are to reverse our current challenges.
The Scottish Government has set ambitious national targets to halt biodiversity loss by 2030 and reach carbon net zero by 2045. Landscape scale nature restoration initiatives will play an important role in reaching these targets. It is heartening to see many initiatives building momentum such as Cairngorms Connect, Wild Strathfillan and the Wild Heart of Scotland. Closer to home, the Tweed Forum continues its excellent work over recent decades to restore areas of the Scottish Borders.
Our Muir to Forth initiative aims to build a similar reputation through a long-term vision to create an inter-connected ‘nature network’ of biodiverse corridors across East Lothian working in strategic partnerships with land managers, NGOs, businesses and the Local Authority. Bold initiatives at a landscape scale like Muir to Forth are nationally critical to address our current challenges. I am very much looking forward to playing a leading role in this exciting and vitally important initiative.
Links to a selection of landscape scale initiatives in Scotland:
Wild Srathfillan: https://trustinthepark.org/wildstrathfillan/
Cairngorm Connect: https://trustinthepark.org/wildstrathfillan/
Wild Heart of Scotland: https://bordersforesttrust.org/wild-heart/
Tweed Forum: https://tweedforum.org/
