The Church Commissioners is a body which administers the property assets of the Church of England. The Church Times reported that a group of campaigners, including the former Environment Secretary Michael Gove, the actor Stephen Fry, the former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas, as well as the chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, with support from over 100,000 members of the public, are calling on the Commissioners to rewild just one third of their land, which would equate to an area 90 times the size of Hyde Park, and “give British wildlife the salvation that it desperately needs.”
Leading the protest, Chris Packham, the BBC Springwatch presenter, said: “The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the Church’s wealthy investment arm — the Church Commissioners — are failing all things bright and beautiful. Despite the Archbishop recently stating that ‘God is green, and he calls on us to be green,’ the majority of the Church Commissioners’ land is in a dire ecological condition. As one of the biggest institutional landowners in one of the world’s most nature depleted countries, the Church should be a leader in restoring our precious wildlife.”
The UK is ranked in the bottom 10% of nations globally for biodiversity. Lord Williams said: “Letting the natural world be itself — not just a reserve bank for our convenience — is an act of grace, and one that we should be glad to embrace, because when the world around us flourishes, so do we.”
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