Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of introducing a compensation scheme for farming businesses adversely impacted by species reintroductions.

As we look to deliver on our statutory environmental targets, including to halt the decline of species abundance by 2030, we are expanding our environmental land management schemes to incentivise farmers and land managers to provide environmental goods and services alongside food production. Paying for actions that make space for nature and encouraging the restoration of habitat will help to deliver environmental benefits as well as improve the interaction between species that may have been reintroduced and farming operations.

Where the release of a species may impact on local land managers and businesses, a licence application would need to outline how these impacts would be mitigated as well as demonstrate sufficient funding to do so.