This is the Guardian.

The image many of us will have of the UK,

lush rolling hills and meadows, shimmering chalk streams, fields

with giant oak trees and finches overhead. Well it doesn't really fit with reality anymore.

The variety of plant and animal life in the UK is so depleted it could cause an ecological meltdown.

Even in those identified as conservation priorities, there's been an average 60% decline.

Look how many orchres there are here, how many trees there are there.

Lots of Kent was like this, whereas this is what it

looks like now, there's hardly a tree to be seen. Rising sea levels are

exposing hundreds of landfill sites and leaking their toxic contents into surrounding areas.

I remember a time when they used to be hedgehogs.

I used to watch them in our garden and out the back gate as it was getting dark and I just

wish that I could see all this abundant life now the

way it used to be then.

Things need to change and soon.

So this week the government published a major environmental improvement plan

or EIP for England and it sets out ambitious targets promising to restore nature

and improve the environmental quality of air, water and land. But is this blueprint ambitious enough? Will it really be able to

halt and reverse the dire environmental outlook and restore our green and pleasant lands.

From the Guardian I'm Madeline Finley and this is Science Weekly. Editor at the Guardian and you've been looking at the government's new

environment plan for England but before we get to that I'd like to get some

context here in the UK more widely we haven't been great at looking after our environment historically, have we?

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