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This is excellent news. Congratulations @TonyJuniper. I hope you are bargaining hard to get the resources and support required to turn Natural England around. It's in a shocking state.
It's not just that @NaturalEngland is chronically underfunded and understaffed. It has also been systematically disciplined by successive secretaries of state, ensuring it is not allowed to regulate their favoured businesses.
The board has been stuffed, at various times, with people who have crashing conflicts of interest, and appear to be more closely aligned with the destroyers than the protectors.
Every day will be a fight, @TonyJuniper, and it's essential that @michaelgove gives you the support you need to clean out these Augean Stables. Kudos to Gove for an inspired and potentially game-changing appointment.
For too long, @NaturalEngland has been in the hands of landowners, housebuilders and people whose lucrative consultancies benefit from its decisions. It's a sign of how bleak things have become that choosing an environmental champion to chair it is greeted with amazement.
Here, by contrast, is what happened when @OwenPaterson was in charge: monbiot.com/2013/12/06/tra…
