Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast. We are the charity and think tank dedicated to achieving ambitious leadership for the environment. I'm Ruth Chambers, Senior Fellow at Green Alliance.

So I'm delighted to be joined today by Joe Wilkins, Policy and Advocacy Manager at the Wildlife Trusts in Wales. Welcome, Joe. I'm looking forward to

exploring the state of nature and of Welsh politics with you, both of which I think is fair to say

are facing significant challenges and uncertainties. And of course, we must also talk about the new

environmental governance bill, which is making its way through the Welsh Parliament,

Senith Camry. It's certainly been a long time coming, eight years in fact, but at long last it's here,

although we have one eye on the clock, don't we, as it's got to pass before the Senate elections

in May 26. One thing that bill will do is it will lead to new nature targets in Wales, which I think is a good place to start.

But first of all, would you mind telling us a bit about your role at the Wildlife Trusts in Wales?

Yeah, of course. Thank you very much for having me.

Yeah, so I've only started this role very recently actually, as when this goes out. I think I'll have been doing it for about four weeks.

So it's a very new role which I'm really excited to be stepping into and like you said

I feel like both nature and politics in Wales is in a very interesting place.

If we'll start then I'm sure we'll delve into what I mean by that.

But you know the role will be predominantly working with members of the Senev.

And especially in this sort of very exciting year, we'll be looking at political parties and their manifestos in depth

and exploring where nature is included and perhaps where there's space for nature to be included in their manifestos.

Working a lot on the species champion project, making sure that members of the

Sen-Earth, whatever, they're regional or just a topic of interest, they have something to focus on

as well. So I've been really excited to step into that. It kind of feels like a nice step from my,

you know, work in the past, which has been a mix of, I used to work for West

Wales Rivers Trust, doing a lot of farm engagement and community engagement, which I loved

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