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From the Office of

Rt Hon ELLIOT MORLEY MP

London Office 0207 219 3569

Constituency 01724 842000

Email morleye@parliament.uk

Pledging to help wildlife adapt to a changing climate

Scunthorpe MP, Elliot Morley has pledged to help our wildlife to adapt to a changing climate. Mr Morley attended The Wildlife Trusts’1 event in the House of Commons2 where they celebrated the milestone of 100 Living Landscape schemes3 covering one million hectares around the UK. These schemes help wildlife prepare for the advent of climate change.

Mr Morley said ‘I am delighted to help The Wildlife Trusts, including Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust that works in my constituency, deliver on their Living Landscape vision. It is clear we must now prepare for the inevitable impact of climate change. It is important that we value our natural environment as part of that. Now that the Climate Change Bill4 includes measures to put climate change adaptation on the agenda of Government action, the natural environment on which we all depend, is central to these policies and programmes. Parliamentarians have a vital role in ensuring this happens.’

The effects of climate change will result in many plants and animals needing to move in search of suitable conditions: a 2ºC rise in temperature could shift the natural range of some species by more than 150 miles to the north or nearly 1,000 ft up hillsides. The Wildlife Trusts’ Living Landscape schemes aim to facilitate this process by enlarging specially protected areas, joining them up and ‘greening’ the places that are more hostile to plants and animals such as urban areas.

tort systems, site protection systems, water and flood management.

6. Professor Dieter Helm CBE also spoke at the event. He is an economist and is a Fellow of New College, University of Oxford.

For more information go to wildlifetrusts.org