Environment

A pilot scheme has selected four green projects to receive grant funding in a bid to attract private sector investment while delivering long-term environmental benefits.

As thousands of walkers descend on the countryside during the coronavirus lockdown, the National Sheep Association (NSA) has called for visitors to show more ‘respect’ for the land and those who farm it.

Rural organisations have joined forces to demand Environment Secretary George Eustice bring the ‘chaotic’ wildlife licensing system, run by Natural England (NE), back into central Government to be reformed.

Hundreds of acres of moorland and forestry have been engulfed by wildfires due to the recent dry weather and ’irresponsible’ behaviour of people visiting the countryside.

The EU has promised to learn lessons from the coronavirus pandemic by developing a new food security contingency plan.

The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) has confirmed that more than 3,800 bridging payments worth around £43 million have been successfully made to farmers and land managers.

A physiotherapy career is not a natural precursor to farming, but Hannah Darby has brought insights from outside agriculture back to the family farm. Chloe Dunne reports.

Around half of Welsh farmers who applied for Glastir payments for 2019 commitments were still waiting for their money at the start of May, prompting concern about how the planned post-Brexit scheme will function.

In promising to uphold the UK’s high food production standards, but refusing to explain how, the Government has displayed a failure of imagination on post-Brexit trade policy, says Tom Lancaster, acting head of land, seas and climate policy at the RSPB.

Faced with the greatest threat to public health this country has faced in our lifetimes, the Government has taken a series of unprecedented steps to protect the NHS and save many thousands of lives, says Defra Secretary George Eustice.