Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

I am sorry to be late in rising to support my noble friend Lady Byford. We come back to the theme of trying to make quite sure that we understand what the Government mean in this Bill, and therefore trying to wheedle out of them exactly what it is they mean, then we can proceed along the lines of agreeing or not. Where the amendment leaves out ““conserving”” and inserts ““protecting””, I go back again to conserving an environment in the way of conserving an aspect, or in the way of conserving jam with sugar—you keep it exactly as it is, there are no alterations at all. Whereas my understanding of ““protecting”” is allowing that environment—as I have said, a vibrant, living and changing environment—to have a natural change, and allowing it to account for climate change. I am not sure the example I shall give is particularly good. Let us go back to the bluebell woods. If you have some wonderful bluebell woods which are beginning to get eaten by an ever-growing population of muntjac, do you conserve those woods by culling the muntjac, or do you protect them by allowing the muntjac to breed and diminish that landscape? The difference is that either one allows the landscape to evolve or one does not. How is the Bill meant to be describing this?