Ben Goldsmith

Next time you're in the British uplands, perhaps in one of our national parks, Dartmoor, say, or the Lake District, stop a while to watch a flock of sheep, and count how many of them are limping. You'll find it's a lot. Because keeping sheep year-round in our bleak uplands is an animal welfare issue on a huge scale, hidden in plain sight. A popular piece of dark farming humour says that sheep "spend all their lives finding ways to die" I've been in trouble with the sheep lobby on X for saying this. Especially boisterous in his criticism has been legendary upland farmer James Rebanks, author of The Shepherd's Life and English Pastoral, a truly wonderful book, after I stated (perhaps a little thoughtlessly) in a reply to someone or other that "there are no shepherds anymore!

An enormous fire near Dovestone Reservoir in Oldham has been burning since 11 July, one of many this summer. Billowing black smoke can be seen (and inhaled) for miles around. Helicopters, fire crews and volunteers have been working the lines on blackened hillsides in conditions that are fast becoming routine in Britain. Our uplands are burning more, hotter and longer than at any point in living memory. This year’s tally (already over 21,000 hectares) follows a 2025 season that was the worst on record. Sheep farming representatives and grouse shooting interests are adamant that rewilding is to blame for the fires: the reduction in sheep numbers, the emergence of scrub and the build-up of fuel. But the precise opposite is true.

During the last Conservative government, it was common to hear the refrain that the prime minister of the day was waging a 'war on nature'. As someone who played a role in advising a string of environment ministers, I always thought that to be somewhat hyperbolic. I always admire the passion of campaigners, and I share with them a longing for our government to go further and do more for nature; but, at least until the last couple of years of Conservative government, I didn’t think many of the criticisms were fair. I’m starting to worry now, though, that we’re living in an altogether different world. The new Labour government was elected on a promise to protect and restore nature. And yet here we are a year later wistfully contemplating those halcyon days when No.

The surprise appearance and subsequent safe capture this week of a seemingly tame family of Eurasian lynx in the Scottish Highlands, more than a millennium after the species was extirpated from Britain, has been by far the most bizarre British news story of the year so far. For a brief moment, one of Britain’s most iconic extinct species is now dominating the national discourse – which can only be a good thing. The big question arising from this story, though, is not how the unfortunate creatures got there; but why the lynx, a secretive, beautiful British native species, was not officially reintroduced to Britain long ago. There are no good reasons for not doing so.

For people who love the natural world, each new season brings new excitements. We are a nation of nature lovers. We feed the birds in our gardens and we revere David Attenborough. Which makes it surprising that – until now – governments have not cottoned on to how much of a vote-winner concerted action to restore and protect nature can be. Year in year out the abundance of life around us diminishes. Most adults can remember car windscreens splattered with dead insects after even the shortest of summer journeys. No longer. Insect populations are crashing almost everywhere, and with them everything else.

Those on the left tend to think that British Conservatism is a derivative of US Republicanism. But environmental policy shows that it’s a far more pragmatic mix. The latest Conservative manifesto encompasses George W Bush’s marine conservation ambition and Obama’s selective interventions to raise the pace of clean technology innovation.  This partly reflects the fact that the environment is still a largely non-partisan issue in British politics, but also that Cameron has protected discreet space for Conservative modernisers to bring forward new green ideas. As one of them I’m pleased with the progress we’ve been able to make.