HAVING interviewed a number of beekeepers locally, I’ve been aware of the plight of bees for some years.

My work has taken me to various apiaries and at each one I’ve heard the same story – our bees are dying out.

However, a BBC Panorama programme last week, titled Britain’s Disappearing Wildlife, revealed in painful detail the true state of our natural environment. The demise of the bee is just the tip of the iceberg.

Our plants, insects, birds, butterflies and fish are all on the decline, confirming that Britain (and the rest of the world) is becoming less biodiverse.

“Why should we care?” asked the programme, as we saw empty sea beds and lifeless fields. If you didn’t already know, the answer was soon revealed.

Now if you’re anything like me, you’d probably agree that nature is one of life’s finest pleasures – to lose it would damage our quality of life. Sometimes a skylark can hit the notes your favourite band can’t and the sight of a dolphin scything through the surf is always captivating.

However, even those unconvinced by the virtues of nature would soon have started to listen when the BBC wheeled out the economists – it was time for money to do the talking.

So the programme took us to China, to vast areas of land that are now devoid of pollinators. Here men and women were climbing trees, carrying out the laborious task of pollinating each and every flower to ensure farms could keep producing food without nature. A grim glimpse of the future? Unless we halt the decline of our pollinators, then yes – and it’s going to be expensive.

While bees, butterflies and other insects currently pollinate crops for free, without them we’re up the creek without a paddle.

Experts say it would cost the UK £1.5 billion every year, a hefty bill that would be picked up by consumers at the checkout. Ouch.

“If we do nothing in two or three years time we’re going to have food security problems,” explained Dr Simon Potts, of the University of Reading.

His sentiments were echoed by investment banker Pavan Sukhdev, who was hired by the UN and the EU to investigate the relationship between biodiversity and the economy.

“Try pollinating a cocoa plant by hand,” he said, scoffing some chocolate. “You’re going to have a tough time doing that and the chocolate you get will be so expensive nobody will be able to afford it.”

So what’s the answer?

Creating protected areas on land and at sea has proven to boost biodiversity and we’re making steps in the right direction to create more of these. Only last week conservationists in Dorset welcomed the county’s first protected waters, the Lyme Bay and Torbay Special Area of Conservation. It will soon become part of a European network of protected sites, which gives full legal protection for the sites’ habitats and species.

Happily another area is being considered for protection at Purbeck.

On land the government has subsidised farmers to practice more sustainable farming in a bid to encourage more wildlife back to farmland, which takes up so much of our countryside.

It has proven to work, but these measures just aren’t enough.

We need faster action, tougher policies and more environmental accountability for large corporations. Only last year supermarkets talked tough on the use of plastic bags, yet 12 months on there has actually been an increase in the amount used – if we can’t get little things like this right, how are we going to achieve big things like reversing the demise of our wildlife?

The UK has missed two international targets for halting the decline in biodiversity this year, along with 191 other countries. In October the UN will hold another global conference that will set new targets for protecting our plants and animals.

We must meet these targets; our time is running out.