In a Parliamentary debate on Public Access to Nature (18 May 2023), MP Bob Seely highlighted the importance of the Island’s natural heritage and called for Island-wide environmental protections.
Bob explained: “There is a very strong case for introducing an island designation in our landscape protection, and I believe it should be introduced first in the Isle of Wight because of the uniqueness of our environment, the uniqueness of our habitats, the uniqueness of our wildlife and the uniqueness of our geology.”
He pointed out that the Government has committed to protect 30 per cent of Britain’s land by 2030 and urged the Minister to consider an ‘Island Park’ designation to protect the Island.
“In UK designations, more than half our land is an AONB, which I believe is wrongly parcelled into different areas. If we are to treat one bit of countryside as a unified entity, surely it should be an island, and therefore it should surely be the Isle of Wight.”
“An island park designation would see the Island as a single ecological and environmental entity. Access to nature would be provided wherever necessary, respecting the law, but it would primarily function for the benefit of the nature recovery plan.”
In his speech, Bob discussed the importance and diversity of the Island’s flora, fauna and habitats.
“Our landscape and seascape include: broad-leaf mixed and yew woodland; maritime cliff and slope; lowland calcareous grassland; coastal and floodplain grazing marsh; lowland meadows; reedbeds; lowland dry acidic grassland; fens; lowland heathland; the chalk downs that provide the spine of the Island, from Bembridge on one side to the Needles all the way over in the west; saline lagoons; mudflats; coastal sand dunes, and coastal vegetated shingle.”
“We are also home to many different species, some of which are unique to the Isle of Wight. Importantly, we have species on the Island, some of them flourishing, that are near-extinct in other parts of the United Kingdom. Those include red squirrels, dormice and water voles, because we do not have grey squirrels or lots of escaped mink.”
“Our specialised flora includes early gentian, which is found in Wiltshire, Dorset and the Isle of Wight; field cow-wheat, which is present in only a few locations in the country; and wood calamint, which we have in a single dry chalk valley on the Island. For insects, the Island is the sole British location of the Glanville fritillary butterfly and the reddish buff moth. About a decade ago, we rediscovered the bee hawk-moth in part of the Island.”
Bat species on the Island which are relatively rare in the UK include Bechstein’s bat, grey long-eared bat and greater horseshoe bat. The Island’s shores and marine conservation zones support populations of spiny seahorse, short-snouted seahorse, native oyster, peacock’s tail and stalked jellyfish.
Bob discussed the Island’s cultural heritage and named a number of important historical figures whose work was inspired by the natural beauty of the Island, including Lord Tennyson, John Keats, and J. M. W. Turner.
Addressing the Minister for Natural Environment and Land Use, Trudy Harrison MP, Bob outlined the need to protect the Island’s landscape, permitting homes primarily for Islanders, and ruling out large-scale, unsustainable housing developments on greenfield land.
Concluding the debate, Minister Trudy Harrison MP said: “The Isle of Wight is perhaps the winner here today for the promotion of nature.”
