Overview of assessment of change for all indicators
The table below summarises traffic light assessments over the
longer term and since 2000, for the 18 indicators and their 34
component measures.
4. The earliest available year is used as the
baseline for assessment of long-term change. The base year used for
each measure is shown in the table. Where data are unavailable, or
do not precede 1996, a long-term assessment is not
given.
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Improving
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Little or no overall change
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Deteriorating
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Insufficient or no comparable data
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The individual assessments for each measure
can be combined to produce an overall assessment. This provides a
summary of progress.
The pie charts below display the
numbers of measures that have shown an improvement (green traffic
light), a deterioration (red traffic light), little or no overall
change (amber traffic light) or that have insufficient data for an
assessment to be made (white traffic light). Assessments of change
over the longer term and since 2000 are shown.
As well as overall summaries based on all
measures in the indicators, separate summaries for focal areas
1-4 are shown which are based on the indicators and measures
within each focal area. Focal areas 5 and 6 have very few measures
and separate pie charts are not shown.
Assessment of change: all measures
Of the 33 measures used to compile the ‘all measures’ summary
chart, 16 (49 per cent) show an improvement since 2000, compared
with nine measures (27 per cent) showing improvement over the
longer term. Those showing improvement since 2000 include UK
Biodiversity Action Plan priority species, the extent of protected
areas, the percentage of woodland under certified management,
sustainable fisheries, biological river quality, and expenditure on
both UK and global biodiversity.
Those measures showing long-term deterioration include
populations of farmland birds and woodland birds, populations of
specialist butterflies, bat populations and plant diversity (in
woodland and grassland, and in boundary habitats). Some of these
measures have continued to deteriorate in the short term (e.g.
farmland birds and the plant diversity of boundary habitats). Bat
populations have shown improvement since 2000, whilst
specialist butterflies have shown little or no overall
change.
Assessment of change: focal areas
There were long-term declines for seven measures (41 per cent)
within focal area 1 (status and trends of biological diversity),
reflecting the very large declines in bird, butterfly and bat
populations seen in the 1970s and 80s. Since 2000, these long-term
declines have generally slowed, with some measures previously
assessed as deteriorating showing either improvement or little or
no overall change since 2000. These conclusions should be viewed
with some caution as changes are more difficult to assess over the
short term. Two measures within focal area 1, breeding seabirds and
wintering waterbirds, show a long-term improvement, but
deterioration since 2000.
Focal area 3 has the greatest proportion of assessments showing
deterioration in both the long- and short-term, reflecting a
pattern of continuing or growing threat to biodiversity in the
UK.