A NATIONAL park with the largest area of designated wildlife sites has defended its conservation efforts after campaigners claimed bodies managing the protected landscapes were failing to reverse "dire ecological decline".

The Campaign for National Parks said just 30 per per cent of the 57,000 hectares of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in the Yorkshire Dales National Park had been classed as being in "favourable" condition by Natural England.

In the North York Moors National Park, this figure was just over 12 per cent.

The figures showed designated wildlife sites were not in as good condition in national parks as those outside them.

Television presenter and vice president of Campaign for National Parks, Iolo Williams said: “National parks need to urgently pull their socks up and turn around the unacceptable loss of nature from the Parks.

“Across the countryside we are facing a dire ecological decline, as special protected landscapes national parks must set an example and lead the way forward.”

In a report published today, the campaign group called for a move away from intense protection of individual sites for specific species to focus on a landscape-scale approach and instead prioritise re-establishing natural processes.

It added national park authorities "should show more leadership in addressing wildlife declines".

A meeting of the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority yesterday heard "massive investment" and work had gone into nature conservation over the last five years, but it would take many more years to meet Natural England's "favourable" standard.

The authority's deputy chairman, Jocelyn Manners-Armstrong, called for a more pro-active approach by the authority, ahead of a Government review of how well it is meeting its statutory purposes. She said: "This is a time for action, not reaction. Doing more of the same of what we have done before will not be enough."

Gary Smith, the authority's director of conservation, said the authority was facing a "time lag between investment and changes on the ground".

He added having vast areas of peatland, which is costly and takes time to restore, in its designated sites was proving challenging, but 19,000 hectares of peatland had been restored.

The meeting was told while only 40 per cent of the park's rivers were in favourable condition, that was the second best figure of all national park authorities.

Mr Smith said: "We had hoped to see some quicker progress on the rivers in the national park. It hasn't happened. We are still hopeful that we will start to see those improvements soon, because there is a lot of investment going in."

The meeting also heard an "utterly ridiculous" Government planning policy requiring planning consent to put a roof on a slurry store to stop muck running into rivers was impeding conservation efforts.

Authority member Caroline Thornton-Berry said the authority's conservation efforts were also being hampered by its success in attracting more visitors, with groups of people disturbing its most sensitive wildlife areas.

The Yorkshire Dales park saw by far the highest rise in visitor numbers of any national park between 2014 and 2016, with an extra 23.4 per cent.

Mrs Manners-Armstrong said: "We have seen rather than waiting to be told Defra's policy objectives, where we take the initiative, drive forward ideas and present solutions we can have great impact on policy development for the long-term."