UK conservation goals insufficient to save ants and bees, says expert

Insects and other invertebrates are the foundations of a healthy environment, the charity Buglife says. Photograph: Panther Media GmbH/Alamy

The UK’s targets to stop the destruction of the natural world are so inadequate that they could be met even if all the country’s bees, wasps, ants and moths were to go extinct, the government has been warned.

Natural England’s red list and the government’s biodiversity indicators are used to measure changes in species abundance and as the baseline measures for targets to halt species extinction.