Leading article: Mr Blair must prove his commitment to the environment

ENVIRONMENTAL PRESSURE groups are beginning to get a bad name these days for the absurdity of some of their claims and the violence of some of their protests. But then, faced with a Government so resistant to calls to act on its environmental promises as this one, perhaps their exaggeration is understandable.

So it is today with Friends of the Earth, who announce that "the UK is bottom of the international league table for wildlife protection". This is a cheerful piece of nonsense. Its basis is a technicality: the claim that no nature reserve, national park or other protected area in Britain meets the strictest protection criteria laid down by the Swiss-based World Conservation Union, whereas there are parts of other countries that do.

These criteria specify "areas not materially altered by human activity". All of Britain has been farmed since the stone age; all of Britain has been so altered. It is an impossible requirement for the UK to meet.

However, even if the accusation had force, it would be wilful to ignore the vast conservation effort that is currently under way in Britain. It is doubtful if any other country is taking its responsibilities under the 1992 Convention on Biodiversity so seriously: the UK has currently produced detailed action plans for the recovery of 319 threatened animal, plant and insect species, ranging from the red squirrel to the skylark, from flowers such as the early gentian to butterflies such as the adonis blue and fish such as the basking shark. To rank Britain below Japan, which is defiantly continuing to slaughter whales, or even France, whose hunters every year engage in a mass killing of migratory birds which is clearly outside the strict limits prescribed by EU law but sanctioned by a government afraid of the power of the shooting lobby, is perverse in the extreme.

Yet, after all that, Friends of the Earth's exaggeration is aimed at a worthwhile target. Britain's long-established network of state wildlife sites (principally Sites of Special Scientific Interest), wide and fairly comprehensive though it is, is ancient and creaking: a great many sites harbouring precious species have been damaged, either wilfully or by neglect, and there is widespread agreement that they need much greater protection. At great length, the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions has consulted; the consultees have responded; the department has formulated its detailed proposals. All it needs now - as these require primary legislation - is a slot in the legislative timetable, and a mention in the next Queen's Speech.

And there's the rub. For all the fine words, and the efforts of the Environment Minister Michael Meacher, this is a government that has been conspicuous by what it has not done for the environment, not for what it has. The recommendations come, they arrive at Number 10, and there they are filed under "pending". After two years of excuses, there is an increasing sense among environmentalists that Mr Blair himself sees the environment as irrelevant to the Great Project. He fervently espouses two technologies which are anathema to the green movement, nuclear power and genetic engineering.

Mr Blair now has the opportunity to show that his proclaimed commitment to protecting the natural world is not empty rhetoric. He should, as a priority, make room in the Queen's Speech for an environmental Bill, which will accommodate not only more protection for wildlife sites, but a series of other environmental commitments that have been stacking up over the past two years, including the Right to Roam. Otherwise, he will justify the growing suspicion that this Prime Minister, who promised to "put the environment at the heart of Government", does not have an environmental bone in his body.