A new report published today by The Wildlife Trusts warns that the Government is on track to harm nature’s ability to protect us against dangerous weather unless forthcoming policies which undermine nature's protection, including the Nuclear Regulation Bill, are reconsidered.
As MPs prepare to return to Westminster after a summer of wildfires and drought, the report sets out how successive Governments’ attacks on England’s most effective nature protections, the Habitats Regulations, have undermined the nation’s resilience to weather extremes.
Since Brexit, the report - What have the Habitats Regulations ever done for us? - highlights how the protections have often alarmingly served as a ‘political piñata’:
- The Conservative Governments of 2020 - 2024 made repeated attempts to weaken the Habitats Regulations. This includes their ‘attack on nature’ in 2022, branded as such by the outraged coalition of The Wildlife Trusts, the National Trust, and the RSPB.
- The Starmer administration continued these attacks through the Planning and Infrastructure Act in 2025, and later the Nuclear Regulation Bill, as announced in the May 2026 King’s speech.
- The Burnham administration has inherited the plans to weaken the Regulations further around nuclear sites, a move The Wildlife Trusts warn could devastate some of the few places where nature is effectively protected.
Crucially, the report highlights what further attacks on nature protection would mean for national security in the face of increasingly dangerous weather. Healthy nature provides a buffer against the immediate impacts of climate change through a range of services, including keeping water in the landscape to guard against wildfire and drought, shading livestock and crops and enriching soil on sun-blasted farmland, and providing cooler spaces for people during repeated heatwaves.
A further weakening of the Habitats Regulations - the keystone of much of the nature we have left - would diminish these climate change protections, leaving much of England even more exposed to dangerous weather, The Wildlife Trusts warn.
Matt Browne, head of public affairs at The Wildlife Trusts, says:
“For decades, the Habitats Regulations have protected rare, threatened, or valuable natural habitats and wildlife across the country, offering flickers of hope against a backdrop of widespread nature decline and bringing economic, health and social benefits to communities across the country.
“Attacks on these vital protections, as our report sets out, have been on shaky ground. In the wake of record wildfires, and after years of relentless pressure on these protections and all they do for nature and people, the Prime Minister must drop this discredited nature-bashing approach, reconsider the nature-harming Nuclear Bill inherited from Starmer, and focus instead on boosting national security in the face of accelerating environmental threats. As England smoulders and the public worries about future summers, nature protection can help with dangerous weather and so much more – but only if Westminster will let it.”
Effective nature protection also provides huge benefits for people; underpinning billions in tourism revenue, boosting public health, and providing beauty to illuminate and inspire national life.
With over half of the British public reporting that the heat this summer has disrupted their lives, and 87% believing that similar heatwaves will characterise future summers (1), The Wildlife Trusts warn that continuing with environmental deregulation would see the Government worsen the impacts of dangerous weather not only on nature, but on homes, livelihoods and communities across the country too.