With renewed global insecurity, and the prospect of yet more cost-of-living increases as a result of it, the national mood is gloomy. In such strained times, nature is a reliable, everyday source of hope. Millions of people this Easter will take heart from the natural world coming to back life around us; the first butterflies, the rising birdsong on bright mornings, the smell of wild garlic in the woods.  

This spring, nature-lovers can take further comfort from a new development – a changing wind for wildlife in Westminster.  

The Nuclear Regulatory Review: Turning the dial  

2025 was a torrid year for nature policy. The UK Government started it by claiming that bats and newts were blockers to national prosperity, spent nine months pushing through the environmentally regressive Planning and Infrastructure Act and closed the year with the Prime Minister describing nature protections as ‘well-intentioned, but fundamentally misguided’. 

Despite growing doubts about the wisdom of this nature-bashing strategy, which over the course of 2025 set back nature recovery and net zero efforts, alienated the public and had no discernible impact on business confidence and growth, Ministers had been set to start 2026 with a deregulatory bang. 

November’s Nuclear Regulatory Review recommended an evisceration of nature protections, including the critical Habitats Regulations, in the mistaken belief that this would accelerate the deployment of nuclear energy. On 1^st December the Prime Minister promised to accept all the recommendations and added in his throw-away line about nature protections being misguided. 

For many, this was a final straw. 

Thousands of nature-lovers took part in The Wildlife Trusts’ ‘don’t turn nature crisis into catastrophe’ campaign, exposing the flawed arguments behind environmental deregulation and urging Ministers to step back from recommendations which would make the nature crisis worse whilst doing nothing to boost energy deployment.  

This pressure had an impact 

In March, the Government announced its implementation plan for the Nuclear Regulatory Review. Ministers rejected recommendations to legislate to remove three critical aspects of the Habitats Regulations, namely rules which require developers to: 

• demonstrate no overall harm to important nature sites 

• offer like-for-like compensation for damage; and 

• consider cumulative impacts on wildlife.  

Instead of legislation to gut these nature protections, the Government committed to guidance to address points raised by the review. The recommendation to remove a duty requiring local authorities to contribute to nature conservation in protected landscapes was also rejected, in favour of a tweak to specify that this contribution should not involve financial levies on infrastructure developers. 

The March announcement was a shift away from nature-damaging proposals, albeit not a complete one. The commitment to legislative tweaks could be a foot in the door for regression, and bad guidance could still reduce the rigour of the Habitats Regulations. 

The Wildlife Trusts will be working hard over the months ahead to remind the Government that guidance is an expression of the law as it stands, not a replacement to it. We will also hold the Prime Minister to his personal promise in the implementation plan foreword to not allow increased nuclear deployment to ‘threaten our glorious natural inheritance’, and to the commitment elsewhere in the plan that ‘this government will not lower environmental protections’. 

So, much more work remains to be done, but things have moved in the right direction. 

In four months, Government communications on nature protections have gone from describing them as ‘fundamentally misguided’ to protections being hailed as guarantors of ‘a glorious natural inheritance’. The prospect of a new Planning Bill to rip up legal protections wholesale has receded. It is public and political pressure that has secured this shift.  

To everyone who wrote to their MP, asking them to urge Ministers stand back from the nature-destroying brink, and to all the MPs that took a stand - thank you.  

Nature is rising up the political agenda  

Signs of a new, more hopeful direction in Government policy extend beyond a watered down Nuclear Regulatory Review. The Land Use Framework for England, published by Defra in March, has a high level of ambition for nature, including a commitment for 6% of land in England to be used primarily for environmental and climate benefit.  

Other welcome Defra policies announced in recent months include new restrictions on the shooting of wild birds, and increased funding for nature-based solutions to flooding. 

This new appreciation of nature reflects a wider movement across Westminster, with MPs from a range of different parties now regularly speaking up to urge more to be done for wildlife.  

Recent weeks have seen MPs come together to

• highlight the security risk posed by nature loss

• call for greater use of nature-based solutions; and

• explore UNESCO world heritage status for England’s chalk streams.

Parliamentarians are meeting on 15^th April to discuss how we are at a red line for nature.  

What needs to happen to keep up this positive momentum for wildlife in the hall of power? Firstly, the Government needs to ignore the siren voices using the conflict in the Middle East as flimsy pretext for further deregulation. This argument, most often pushed by lobbyists working for large companies that stand to directly benefit from deregulation, offers precisely the wrong solution to the current moment.  

We cannot solve one insecurity crisis by fast-forwarding to the next one. 

As the Government’s own biodiversity security assessment makes clear, removing nature protections will accelerate nature loss, risking unparalleled economic disruption by the 2030s. 

The safeguarding of the natural assets which underpin our economy is a pre-requisite for avoiding this disruption and securing stable foundations for economic growth.  

Similarly, a focus on renewable energy in the right places remains our best and fastest route to energy security, just as the progression of the farming transition and implementation of the Land Use Framework remains our best route to climate-proofed food security.  

The Government should reject self-interested calls for deregulation and instead move forward with security-boosting environmental ambition.  There is a lot to deliver on. 

The long-promised ban on bottom trawling can be finally enacted, to help fish populations and wider marine wildlife to recover. Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier can be scaled up so that nature recovery can help more farmers improve their soils and reduce dependence on expensive artificial fertilisers. 

Biodiversity Net Gain can be extended to deliver space for wildlife alongside new homes, grow the green economy and create new jobs. A host of other hugely popular nature promises, from action on peat use in horticulture to increased access to nature for urban communities, remain to be delivered.  
 

Investment in nature is investment in national security  

As MPs and Ministers listen to growing public concern about the future, nature-positive policies offer a meaningful way forward. As Britain faces an energy and food insecurity crisis which we have little immediate control over, this is our opportunity to resolve to at least get ahead of the next one. 

The nature-and-climate crisis is the insecurity we can see coming, and one that we still have a slither of time to prepare for. The cry of ‘never again’ should be answered by work to achieve the energy, food and economic security that only environmental ambition can deliver.  

A healthy natural world, with functioning environmental processes to power renewable energy, regenerative systems to grow our food and ecosystem stability to keep our economy steady, can make instability our past and security our future. 

This prospect - and the possibility of more people in power waking up to it - is a cause for hope, as joyful as the first of bluebells of spring.