Children join Chris Peckham to deliver wildlife petition to Royal Family
- Published
Wildlife expert Chris Packham, alongside 100 children, has delivered a petition to Buckingham Palace on Saturday calling on the Royal Family to do more to conserve nature on their estates.
The Wild Card campaign petition has been signed by 100,000 people asking for measures like rewilding to be allowed to take place.
Famous faces like children's author Michael Morpurgo, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall have all added their names.
The wildlife expert said he hopes this could help to reintroduce animals like beavers and wild boar.
The wildlife campaigner wore a special nature themed hat for the big event
The Royal Estates said they were always looking for ways to continue improving conservation and biodiversity.
Mr Packham told the BBC he wanted the royals to take "more dramatic action", including rewilding.
He said the Royal Family should lead by example before they appear as ambassadors at the COP26 climate summit in November.
Rewilding is the process of returning land and oceans to a more natural state, often by doing nothing and letting nature take over to create more biodiverse areas.
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Mr Packham said rewilding would help the rural economy and, with the support of the Royal Family, send an important message to the world.
He told BBC Breakfast: "The Royal Family are landowners of some magnitude, they own 800,000 acres of the UK, 1.4% of our land surface."
Both Prince Charles and the Queen are passionate about nature and took part in a special tree planting project at Balmoral to mark the Queen's Platinum Jubilee
Royal-owned land in the UK includes the Crown Estate and the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall.
He said that some of the Royal Family's estate - including the Balmoral estate in Scotland - is currently used for deer stalking and grouse shooting with very few trees.
If it were rewilded, he said it "really would be a temperate rainforest, filled with a much richer diversity of life".
Campaigners said while the average tree coverage is 37% in the European Union, the Duchy of Cornwall estate owned by the Prince of Wales has only 6% tree coverage.
Meet Lyra and Wilder, the kids on a mission to help heal nature through rewilding
They have also said that ecologists believe beavers, wolves, bison, wild boar, pine martens and white storks could be introduced if the estates are rewilded.
They want to rewild as much as 50% of the UK over time.
Reflecting on his own role in conservation, he said he felt his "conscience is not clear".
On my watch as an environmentalist and conservationist I have failed these young people, I have failed to act quickly and broadly enough to prevent the crisis that we find ourselves in.
A Royal Estates spokesperson said the Royal Family have a proud history, over 50 years, of getting involved in conservation and are always looking for new ways to further that work.
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