During the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 150 nations – among them the United Kingdom -signed the Convention on Biological Diversity. This states that the Government shall: “Rehabilitate and restore degraded ecosystems and promote the recovery of threatened species”. In 2006, the Natural Environment and Rural Communities (NERC) Act introduced a Biodiversity Duty for all public bodies.
On a national level, the UK Action Plan for biodiversity was launched in 1994. Since then action plans for nationally important species and habitats have been produced and are periodically reviewed. Now known as UK Priority Habitats and Species, these form the basis of Cambridgeshire’s action plans, along with other locally important habitats and species. The Local Habitat and Species Action Plans were first produced in 1999, and reviewed in 2003 and 2008. A complete review of all the BAPS nationally took place in 2007. Find out more about how the UK Priorities were identified and download the full list from JNCC. In Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, we still have a number of local Habitat Action Plans in place, but we have moved to a local list of all Priority Species with example factsheets, rather than selection only a few species to create action plans for. See the Species section for more information.