Labour Councillor Mark Jones has today spoken of the council’s on-going efforts to protect the city’s ecology, with a renewed collaborative approach with organisations throughout the city to ensure that everything possible is being done.

The topic of the city’s ecology and biodiversity has arisen at a council meeting today due to petitioners asking that the council adopt an Ecological Emergency.

In response Cllr Mark Jones, Cabinet Member for Cabinet Member for Environment, Streetscene and Climate Change, stated that what was required was much more than “lip service” to the issue and that it needs “a collaborative approach – with real action” and made promises to the petitioners to work with them on re-doubling efforts to protect the city’s varied ecology and wildlife.

Releasing a statement afterwards, Councillor Jones states:

 “Perhaps the only good thing to have come out of the horrors of the last 12 months is that, due to lockdowns, people have reconnected with nature in way that has perhaps not happened for a long time. With a growing appreciation of our green spaces and the wildlife we live beside.

 “Labour councillors recognise the immense challenges facing nature and our wildlife and, quite simply, this is too important to get wrong. A rush to do something, just for sake for being seen to be doing anything, is not helpful.

“Instead I believe we need a focused, concerted and collaborative approach, with organisations throughout the city to get this right. There is much that our council is doing, but we can go further and I want to see renewed collaboration across the city to get this right.

“It should not be for the council alone to decide the terms of what an ecological emergency looks like and how this should be dealt with. This is why I am committed to a collaborative approach to supporting Sheffield’s ecology, by working on this together”

“We will work on shared strategy to protecting Sheffield’s ecology, and I will be working with all the relevant groups in the city for this, including the petitioners, to make this something really meaningful, that the whole city can get behind”.