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Biodiversity Strategy

Biodiversity can be thought of as the wealth and diversity of wildlife that we have around us and is what we might previously have thought of as Nature Conservation.

Newt During the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 international and national commitments were made. Many of these had to be implemented at a local level. The United Kingdom signed the Convention on Biological Diversity which states that the Government shall "Rehabilitate and restore degraded ecosystems and promote the recovery of threatened species".

In 1994 the UK Biodiversity Steering Group launched the UK Action Plan for biodiversity. Since then action plans for species and habitats thought to be threatened nationally have been produced and are periodically reviewed. These form the basis of Cambridgeshire's action plans, along with other locally important habitats and species. The County's Biodiversity Action Plans have been put together by a local steering group, incorporating many organisations. Peterborough City Council is an active member of both the Biodiversity and Natural Networks Partnerships.

Biodiversity Strategy 2010

The city council’s Biodiversity Strategy was approved by full council on 13 October 2010 to be adopted as part of the council’s major policy framework. The strategy was an update of the 2004 document which was subject to external consultation throughout 2009 and 2010.

The decision to update our current biodiversity strategy was taken to take account of the biodiversity duty brought in by the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act as well as other changes that have taken place since the 2004 strategy was written. The biodiversity duty stipulates that:

"Every public authority must, in exercising its functions, have regard, so far as is consistent with the proper exercise of those functions, to the purpose of conserving biodiversity"

The updated strategy links to the Sustainable Community Strategy and Local Area Agreement by the national indicator target for County Wildlife Sites (NI 197) and more broadly to the Community Strategy and National Indicators by the Cleaner Greener agenda and associated sections of these documents.

The strategy currently consists of the following documents:

The document(s) below appear in Adobe® Acrobat® (PDF) format. In order to view a document you will need to have Acrobat Reader installed. (Those with visual impairments may wish to investigate Access Adobe, which provides tools and information to help make PDF files more accessible).