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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to tackle the decline of UK seabirds.

Ensuring nature’s recovery is a top priority for this Government. This is why the Government has announced a rapid review of the Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP) to deliver on our legally binding environment targets, including reversing the decline in species abundance and reducing the risk of national extinction.

Earlier this year, Natural England published the English Seabird Conservation and Recovery Pathway (ESCaRP), which assesses the vulnerability of seabird species in light of the pressures they are facing and sets out actions that could help to bring about seabird recovery. Defra plans to seek stakeholders’ views on the recommended actions this winter.

The Oslo-Paris Commission (OSPAR), the regional seas convention for the North East Atlantic, has published a Regional Action Plan (RAP) for Marine Birds on 6 September. UK experts were involved in developing the RAP which aims to reduce and eliminate the main pressures and activities impacting marine birds in the North-East Atlantic.