Rob Yorke: Planning and wildlife regulations - a burning ambition

There is a weighty book, ‘What Works in Conservation,’ written by academics full of practical evidence–based works where land management helps, or doesn’t help, conservation measures for amphibian, bat, bird, farmland (provide short grass for birds – yes, more about birds), peatland, heathland, freshwater invasives etc.

It’s packed full of work in progress continually being updated, and while leafing through it recently, I struggled to find much about the use of netting and birds (bar cormorants), whereas there is plenty of fire.

Talking of fire, The Burning Man Festival, a celebration of a self-sufficiency encamped in the Black Rock Desert (a dry lake bed) has run up against the Bureau of Land Management’s 400 page Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).

At least the authorities waived the carbon emissions from torching the man, on the grounds that “burning art is paramount to the event”.

Hellfire and brimstone can sometimes be the making of nature.

Hell – earlier this year I viewed one of the UK’s largest colonies of rare Daubenton’s bats living in old asbestos drainage pipes under the M1.

Fire – many natural ecosystems rely on it and a farmer recently found a hedgerow ash tree burning from a lightning strike.

Brimstone - those resilient butterflies are brilliant at exhibiting cryptic colouration to match their ever-evolving habitat backdrop. 

Habitats are never static – natural or otherwise – whereas planning policy tends to be. Perhaps it has to be. Or does it? Consult over years, hear very little, sign off, only to be out of date within months.

There is an increasing clash in planning terms over land management – a pond for livestock requires no planning (except prior notification in a national park) whereas a pond dug for wildlife requires a full application. With bells on. Costing out two overnighting ecologists to check for Great crested newts (75k in the UK – did the rest of Europe eat theirs?) once made a client wishing to enlarge his wildlife ponds, abort the whole project and blast me for not getting planning permission! 

But no nets please. 

An iphone with little backdrop context, a few emotive words and away the public opinion runs with its value judgements. ‘Keep birds off my blackcurrant bushes so my children can have a glass of Ribena’.

But woe betide a globally experienced environmental contractor on the ground-breaking ‘building with nature’ Bacton sandscaping project who prevents sand martins from prospecting cliffs about to have 1.3 billion tons of sand dumped on them to prevent the sea inundating the gas works and town.

As the parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee launches a consultation on invasive species and Natural England re-gigs the rug on General Licences, one might wonder if online virtue signalling (public opinion) takes precedent over removing signal crayfish by lethal force (public benefit)?

Perhaps it is paramount to saving nature that we burn some of the regulatory paperwork in an effort to ignite more trust around creating more habitat for wildlife.

www.robyorke.co.uk

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