7. What is the Welsh Government doing to protect biodiversity? OQ60913

Diolch, Julie. In respect of biodiversity, we are protecting biodiversity through initiatives such as the nature networks, the marine protected areas and the national peatland action programmes, which benefit our terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments. We are also strengthening our legislative framework, including introducing statutory biodiversity targets, as set out in our recently published white paper.

Diolch. Thank you for that answer, and I'd like to congratulate the Cabinet Secretary on his new post and wish him all the best for the future. And I'm sure he's aware of the successful 20-year-old community campaign to save Llanishen and Lisvane reservoirs and the surrounding area in Cardiff North. At the end of last year I visited Lisvane reservoir with Plantlife Cymru to see for myself the vast number of waxcap fungi species, which make the reservoirs a site of international importance and actually, ultimately, help to save them. Would the Cabinet Secretary agree that this is an absolutely prime example of the community coming together to save a much-loved and biodiversity-rich site that can now be enjoyed, and is being enjoyed, by thousands of visitors every year?

Absolutely, Julie, and it shows what people power can actually do. And just to say to you I know your track record as a supporter of the reservoir action group, to save and then restore Llanishen and Lisvane reservoirs, and the successful conclusion in 2023—what an achievement. People power really does work—grass-roots people power. And your visit with Plantlife Cymru, a great organisation, looking at the red waxcaps—I'll let you into a little secret: I have a very wet garden, it's like a tropical rainforest in itself, and we have, indeed, red waxcaps within my garden as well.

People like Plantlife, Cardiff's local nature partnership developing the local nature recovery action plan, setting out what needs to be done to restore and improve nature in Cardiff—this is the sort of support that we can do, through Welsh Government and through all of us, but also to encourage and incentivise grass-roots organisations and third sector bodies to make a real tangible difference in their local areas. But the success of the scheme of the Lisvane and Llanishen reservoirs was monumental, and it's what we now do to build on the success of that, with all this protecting and enriching and restoring biodiversity around those areas.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary. That brings that question session to an end.