The State of Nature 2023 report documents how human impacts are driving sweeping changes in wildlife in the UK. As well as an overarching assessment of UK flora and fauna, there are separate reports for England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales to look at each country in more depth. The reports pool data and expertise from more than 60 nature conservation and research organisations, a partnership unparalleled in UK conservation. The UK, like most other countries worldwide, has experienced a significant loss of biodiversity. The trends in nature presented in this report cover, at most, 50 years, but these follow on from major changes to the UK’s nature over previous centuries. As a result, the UK is now one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth. The main causes of these declines are clear, as are many ways in which we can reduce impacts and help struggling species. The evidence from the last 50 years shows that on land and in freshwater, significant and ongoing changes in the way we manage our land for agriculture, and the effects of climate change, are having the biggest impacts on our wildlife. At sea, and around our coasts, the main pressures on nature are unsustainable fishing, climate change and marine development. More broadly there has been growing recognition of the value of nature, including its role in tackling climate change, and the need for its conservation among the public and policymakers alike. With each report our monitoring of change improves and we have never had a better understanding of the state of nature. Yet, despite progress in ecosystem restoration, conserving species, and moving towards nature-friendly land and sea use, the UK’s nature and wider environment continues, overall, to decline and degrade. The UK has set ambitious targets to address nature loss through the Global Biodiversity Framework, and although our knowledge of how to do this is excellent, the size of the response and investment remains far from what is needed given the scale and pace of the crisis. We have never had a better understanding of the State of Nature and what is needed to fix it. The Full Report can be downloaded from the State of Nature website, as can reports for England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

State of Nature 2019 documents how human impacts are driving sweeping changes in wildlife in the UK. As well as an overarching assessment of UK flora and fauna, there are separate reports for England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales to look at each country in more depth. The reports pool data and expertise from 53 nature conservation and research organisations, a partnership unparalleled in UK conservation. State of Nature 2019 presents an overview of how the country’s wildlife is faring, looking back over nearly 50 years of monitoring to see how nature has changed in the UK, its Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories. As well as this long-term view, we focus on what has happened in the last decade, and so whether things are getting better or worse for nature. In addition, we have assessed the pressures that are acting on nature, and the responses being made, collectively, to counter these pressures.

The State of Nature report is an assessment of how nature is doing across the UK. As well as an overarching assessment of UK flora and fauna, there are separate reports for England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales to look at each country in more depth. The reports pool data and expertise from 53 nature conservation and research organisations, a partnership unparalleled in UK conservation. The BTO is proud to be a founding member of the State of Nature Partnership and our long-term volunteer-based monitoring schemes are key to such assessments. It is extremely important that well-structured monitoring to track changes in biodiversity continues and that good evidence is collected to identify the causes of change. Publicising the results and engagement with the public as well as policy-makers is essential to the success of any project based on citizen science. Report is available in six different versions. The main report covers the whole UK, with the other reports focussing on England, Scotland, Wales (in both English and Welsh) and Northern Ireland (to be published shortly). The report offers: Key findings A comparison of the most important drivers of change Summaries by habitat Case studies Emerging themes for conservation action An explanation of the methodologies used to produce the report

The report summarises information on trends in more than 3100 species within the major taxonomic groups assessed. The report presents a new Watchlist Indicator, a cross-taxa priority species indicator that tracks changes in the abundance of 155 high priority species for conservation for which trend data are available. This demonstrates that, overall, conservation efforts to reverse the declines in these species have not yet succeeded, and highlights the need to refine the Watchlist Indicator and produce comparable measures from a broader range of species. This report is an excellent use of the population trends produced with the high quality bird data collected in the BTO’s major partnership schemes.