State of Nature 2023: Chris Packham leads more than 40 wildlife and climate groups in protest outside Defra HQ

Environment advocates have donned their badger, beekeeper, and business fish costumes and taken to the streets of London to demand real government action to restore nature in the UK - before it's too late.

Protesters from dozens of climate and wildlife advocacy groups camped out outside the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs' (Defra) London offices from 8am to 2pm on Thursday, waving placards calling on ministers - like Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey - to "wake up and smell the coffey".

The protest came after the State of Nature partnership - made up of dozens of UK-based conservation organisations - published its landmark new State of Nature report on Wednesday evening (27 September).

Great Britain is already one of the world's most nature-depleted countries, but of more than 10,000 plants, animals, and fungi assessed in the report, one in six was found to be at immediate risk of extinction.

Wildlife TV presenter Chris Packham - one of the protest's organisers - told NationalWorld's sister title LondonWorld: "What we’ve seen in recent times again highlighted in the report is that funding for nature restoration and recovery has been cut by 5% in the last five years and 50% in recent times.

“What we need is more support for our farmers, our foresters and our fisher people to make sure that they can afford to move through a transition whereby they can farm, fish and forest and still allow nature to flourish," he continued.

“We know it’s possible but it does require public sector funding and it requires changes in practices to make it easier for people to implement those schemes and that’s essentially why we’re here today.”

Mr Packham said they had brought together "all of the most committed conservationists that we possibly could".

“These are the people with the skill and expertise to make a difference and what the report shows is that when we come together and we have sufficient funding, we’ve got the energy, the skills, the technologies and the passion - we can make that difference."

Groups with a presence at the protest included the Wildlife Trusts, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), WWF, the Badger Trust, Butterfly Conservation, and Extinction Rebellion.

Paul de Zylva, nature campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said now was the time for nature to have its moment in the spotlight. "What we risk losing if our leaders continue to weaken the UK’s environmental protections is beyond thought.

"We are a nation of nature lovers – we must do everything we can to restore and protect vital habitats and endangered wildlife," he continued. "Young people and future generations deserve to inherit a world abundant with nature and flourishing with life.”

The UK government has weakened a number of its climate and nature policies in recent weeks. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced earlier this month u-turns on a number of net zero policies, including pushing the ban on new petrol and diesel cars back five years - to 2035.

There have also been reports the government is planning to delay a green building policy which would have forced developers to leave wildlife habitats in a better state than when construction started.