Hansard

I congratulate Graeme Dey on securing the debate and thank all members for their contributions. It has been good to focus on the wonderful diversity of species that we have in Scotland and to hear the enthusiasm and commitment of members who have spoken in the debate.

I welcome the relaunch of the species champions initiative by Scottish Environment LINK. It was a very successful initiative during the previous session of Parliament—indeed, I understand that it was nominated for several awards and has inspired similar programmes in Wales, Northern Ireland and England. It is yet another example of our forward-thinking approach in Scotland.

As the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform, I am in the privileged position of being a champion for all the species. I do not intend that to be a flippant remark—the challenge of protecting and enhancing Scotland’s biodiversity is important, which is why we are fully committed to working with partners to deliver the Scottish biodiversity strategy and the accompanying route map to 2020. The route map has work under way or planned for the conservation and management of many individual species, including the Scottish wildcat, the red squirrel, the great yellow bumblebee—David Stewart will be pleased to hear that—and the rare lichens that prefer Scotland’s west-coast woodlands.

I am delighted to see that we have almost 60 species champions already, but as Graeme Dey pointed out, that means that the majority of MSPs are not involved. I encourage members who are not currently a species champion to find out about the wonderful and, at times, fragile species in their constituencies and to see what they can do to champion biodiversity. As Johann Lamont suggested, there is often a temptation to seek out the cute and the cuddly species, but the wonderful thing about nature is its diversity. I therefore hope that someone will adopt the tadpole shrimp or learn to love the pond mud snail just as Bruce Crawford has clearly learned to love the slow worm—although his description of its having a forked tongue and being legless led me to think that he had strayed into a description of some of his parliamentary colleagues.

Other colleagues were more circumspect in their descriptions, but it is fair to say that we are all better informed about a number of species than we were at 5 pm—in fact, we may know of the existence of more species than we did at 5 pm. It is also fair to say that some species champions face bigger presentational challenges than others. Nevertheless, I look forward to—and could likely sell tickets for—the forthcoming attraction “Dances with Orcas” starring Tavish Scott, albeit perhaps only briefly.

As some members may be aware, at the end of September Scottish Natural Heritage published a report showing progress across the first full year of activity on the route map. The report shows that almost 80 per cent of the listed actions are on track to achieve or exceed their targets by 2020. However, that means that we also have a clear indication of where attention needs to be focused to ensure that progress is made across all the actions.

The importance of that activity is twofold. First, it is important that we strive to meet our international obligations. Secondly, we must ensure that Scotland’s wonderful biodiversity, including all our fascinating species and habitats, is protected and continues to flourish now and for future generations.

It is good to focus on individual species, so I am grateful to Scottish Environment LINK for raising awareness and providing the impetus through the species champions initiative. However, as a number of members have said, we need to be mindful of the fact that species do not thrive in isolation: they need habitats in which to live, and there are many interactions and dependencies between species. That aspect of the discussion was highlighted by Ruth Maguire—or, as we may now refer to her, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle.

We recognise the importance of the wider and more holistic approach that embraces the whole ecosystem. Much of the work that is under way to deliver against the route map targets is focused at landscape scale, so that the wider ecosystem will be restored or enhanced, thereby delivering a range of other benefits. Just for Angus MacDonald, I will mention the example of our peatland restoration programme. More than 10,000 hectares of peatland have been restored in Scotland since 2012 through the Scottish Natural Heritage led peatland action initiative. As well as providing habitat and space for individual species to thrive, those restored peatlands sequester carbon, improve water storage and provide benefits for the local communities.

I urge all members not just to think of species in terms of the individual bird, animal, insect or plant, but to think more broadly about how protecting and enhancing our biodiversity can benefit a wide range of policy outcomes, including for people. Most important is that healthy species and habitats make for healthy people’s health and wellbeing. For that reason, I am delighted to see that the relaunched species champions initiative has a new focus on urban species. An exemplar of how investing in an improved natural environment benefits species and habitats, and also improves the health, wellbeing and economic opportunities of the local communities is the central Scotland green network, which many members will be very familiar with. It is Europe’s largest green-space project, and it covers pretty much the whole central belt.

Today’s debate has raised awareness of some of our important species and of the Scottish Environment LINK initiative. My closing remarks could hardly do justice to all the members who have proudly told us of the various species that they now champion, some of which they might not have heard of before they were allocated the said species. I hope that the debate has prompted us all to take further action to enhance biodiversity right across Scotland.