High speed train plans are off the rails | The Wildlife Trusts

 A friend who lives near the proposed route of the new  HS train asked me to do what I could to help their campaign to reduce the irreversible damage which will be caused to many environmentally vital areas along the route. I used to be a member of the local Berks,Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust (Visit their campaign page, here,  for full details of the wildlife which will be damaged or lost). It  covers much of  the Chilterns so I  feel personally the damage which will be done even though I now live over 100 miles away.  I'm showing below what the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts has said about this project.


High speed train plans are off the rails | The Wildlife Trusts

High speed train plans are off the rails

Thursday 16th June 2011

Stephanie Hilborne OBE, Chief Executive of The Wildlife Trusts

"The Prime Minister will be heading ‘off the rails’ if he doesn’t withdraw the current HS2 proposal and fully consider the role of high speed rail in England.
At The Wildlife Trusts’ annual conference, held this week, chief executives of 36 local Wildlife Trusts signed a letter to David Cameron, in which they express shared concern at the “very serious damage to wildlife and the countryside that would result from development of the preferred route for the proposed high speed railway line from London to the West Midlands (HS2 Phase 1).”
The letter continues: “We recognise the need for an efficient and sustainable transport system and support moves to a low carbon economy. But as your government has recognised, nature also has great value both to the economy and to the well being of society. To develop built infrastructure at such cost to wildlife contradicts the principles at the heart of The Natural Choice: Securing the Value of Nature – a white paper we called for and greatly welcome.”

“We believe a fresh look is the only way for this Government to leave a positive legacy and to live up to its ambition"

Stephanie Hilborne OBE, Chief Executive of The Wildlife Trusts, calls on the Prime Minister, on behalf of its membership, to withdraw the proposal for High Speed 2 Phase 1 until there has been fuller strategic consideration of the role of High Speed Rail in this country.
She said: “The last Government initiated these proposals in the absence of this and the current assessment of options is in our view flawed. It has failed to take proper account of alternative approaches to improving the speed and capacity of train routes north from London, or even alternative routes for HS2.
“We believe a fresh look is the only way for this Government to leave a positive legacy and to live up to its ambition, expressed in the white paper, of ensuring that ‘this generation is the first to leave the natural environment of England in a better state than it inherited’.”
The Wildlife Trusts have a total membership of more than 800,000 and is the largest voluntary organisation dedicated to conserving the full range of the UK’s habitats and species."

I feel obliged to write yet again to our "Green " government.

National Planning Policy Framework ( NPPF ) Reply to my comments.

I was pleased this morning to receive in the post a letter from the Under Secretary of State replying via my MP to my comments on the NPPF.
I was intending to include it in this post but I have a problem with my scanning so hope to add it later.
I take it to mean that whilst it doesn't say that they agree with me, of course, it might show a glimmer of hope that the Govt is listening to the public and all the other organisations who have criticised the proposals.

I've copied it to our Wildlife Trust so they can see that we volunteers and doing our bit to support their more official efforts.

We have a committee meeting next week so I'll be able to show the results of my comments. We also have our next public meeting with a talk on the importance of woodlands. Woods are often one of the elements of our countryside which suffer with housing and commercial developments.

With some help I can now attach the letter. Just deleted my address.

Spider. Smallest and oldest

BBC News has the story behind the presentation of a 53 million year old, 1mm spider found in a piece of amber in France.

Click .here

National Planning Policy Framework ( NPPF )

The Kingfisher Project introduces primary school children to wild life out on the fields of a local farm.

Here they were examining owl pellets to identify their food and then being shown a beehive.

There is a great deal of work going on in many ways to educate our children in environmental matters.

But I've just written to my MP! I am commenting on the consultation process which has been held recently about proposed changes to planning law. This is a personal view not necessarily the views of our local group.

David Heath CBE MP, House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA

04.11.11

Dear David Heath MP,

Thank you for your letter dated 13^th October on the subject of the NPPF.

I did also send my comments via the web site for comments.

I made the point that I have had some contact with planning laws over many years, first in my work in the construction industry and more recently as a member of a local village society in Buckinghamshire and very recently as a volunteer with the Somerset Wildlife Trust.

The words “presumption in favour of development” jumped off the page in the draft document and I can’t believe they are meaningless or should be read to mean nothing has changed. The whole exercise is designed to change what had gone before.

To say that nothing has changed since the 1940’s is, I’m afraid, a sad reflection on our failure to respond to the huge advance in Climate Change science which will be no doubt reviewed again in South Africa shortly.  Biodiversity loss is yet another related major issue.

The opening words in the document should have said that there is a presumption to ensure environmental sustainability before any development is approved.  The future of our one and only planet is quite important.

I notice that even our military leaders recognise that running an aircraft carrier is unsustainable. That is new!

I notice you refer to protection afforded to national parks, AONB’s and SSSI’s. I am involved in the conservation of a Local Wildlife Site and they are important too.

Your enthusiasm for The Localism Bill is worrying. To remove carefully worked out national directives which have the benefit of scientific guidance will leave local councillors very much in the dark in trying to decide which developments are sustainable. There have been plenty of local examples of pressure being applied to get council approval for suspect schemes, some within your own constituency.

It is a concern that the South Somerset District Council has only one Ecologist employed and then only part time.

I can only hope that you and your colleagues will exercise your own due diligence in making sure you don’t preside over a damaging new law.

Yours sincerely,

Starlings

Starlings at Dawn!
Here is a good reason to join the Twitter family. Somerset Wildlife Trust provides a lot of news items this way and I recommend you sign up to Twitter and follow Somerset Wildlife Trust. I've copied the Tweet information which may give you a link to this particular photo. If you are already on Twitter then it should be straight forward.

I'm pleased to see this photo taken at dawn as the overnight roosting birds leave to to go back to their "day job" I fully intend to make the early visit myself soon.

SomersetWT Som Wildlife Trust

Cracking photo of the starlings leaving Ham Wall - early morning magic ow.ly/7iFjG #somersetstarlings #somersetlevels ^JA

or try this:


Starlings | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Local news

I think I should Blog about some of the small stuff going on in my small part of Somerset. We're getting on with our programme of public meetings. Talks so far on Beavers and then on Rattle Snakes I missed the first which whilst an important conservation subject only attracted a small attendance. Snakes were a more popular subject. We need a certain number paying our very reasonable charges just to cover the cost of the speaker and the hire of the hall.
Last Sundays walk in the Beer Wood was excellent and discovered a rare species for this part of Europe. That was a bit special for the group and a good addition to the record. We must look again next year to see if it will reappear.
Here is a picture of the moment of discovery! Identified as Battarrea phalloides or also  known as a Sandy Stiltball. Followed by the Group gathering round to see what all the fuss was about.I should add that the specimen was well into the cycle of dispersal of spores but the specimen was left in place as a sensible practice. 

I came across an old small booklet recently on the subject of hedges. Their  history is very much tied up in social history going back to the Enclosure Laws which allowed land owners to make it impossible for the general public to have access. It included articles on methods of dating hedges based on a survey of the numbers of species of shrubs and trees that had appeared over time. I've made contact with a local History Society to see if they can help in any way with identifying local ancient hedges.

  This photo is of our newly planted hedge three years ago which contains seven species of hedge plants. According to the theory if you found a hedge with such a number of species it would be several hundreds of years old. That might be confusing at some time in the future! Here is a picture of a worthy volunteer doing the planting by fitting canes and  plastic guards to stop the rabbits from eating the young  plants..

Last Monday I attended a regular meeting of Chairs of Local Area Groups and had a very stimulating discussion about how we all function and how we relate to the parent body , the Somerset Wildlife Trust. Amongst many points raised was the need to review and update a 5 year old document which laid down rules and guidelines for the work we all do as volunteers. On the basis of the old rule that anyone who speaks out on such items gets asked to be involved in the job of doing the revision. So I've got a nice little project for the next 2 or 3 months.

Meanwhile of course our own small committee has its next meeting in a weeks time when we will need to review our future programe and work out what our priorities are. We are very limited in volunteer resources and need to attract more help.

Fungi Foray

We had another fascinating day in Beer Woods and the weather had been kind to us by raining during the week but giving us a dry day for our search.

I've just received a preliminary listing of the fungi spotted by the 14 members and friends who spent over two hours looking for specimens.


We are lucky that we have records of previous forays starting with 2004. A check on the numbers of different species seen shows a wide variation.
2004: 36; 2005:25, 2006:42, 2007:42, 2008: 48;  and now in 2011 a total of 23,  maybe with a few more awaiting identification.
Most fungi enthusiast in this area reckon it has been a bad year weather wise for fungi and our count reflects that.

Our group got quite excited by the discovery of a single specimen of Battarrea phalloides also known as Sandy Stiltball.  A rare find here apparently and a Red Data Book listing. When you have spent hours looking for the Holy Grail I think its reasonable to get a bit excited.

Advertising and Wildlife

This is an interesting view on a major influence on our efforts to conserve wild life. Please read the full article in the Guardian to see George's argument in full. The title below should link to the article. Our problems in wildlife conservation are all linked to the demands put on our environment by our human demands for endless development, growth and prosperity. Advertising must make it harder to find a sensible balance. George Monbiot gets to the heart of a big issue as usual. Posted: 24 Oct 2011 12:25 PM PDT Extracts. Advertising trashes our happiness and trashes the planet. And my income depends on it. By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 24th October 2011 We think we know who the enemies are: banks, big business, lobbyists, the politicians who exist to appease them. But somehow the sector which stitches this system of hypercapitalism together gets overlooked. I am talking about the industry whose output frames this column and pays for it: advertising. For obvious reasons, it is seldom confronted by either the newspapers or the broadcasters. Advertising claims to enhance our choice, but it offers us little choice about whether we see and hear it, and ever less choice about whether we respond to it. Since Edward Bernays began to apply the findings of his uncle Sigmund Freud, advertisers have been developing sophisticated means of overcoming our defences(3). In public they insist that if we become informed consumers and school our children in media literacy we have nothing to fear from their attempts at persuasion. In private they employ neurobiologists to find ever more ingenious methods of bypassing the conscious mind.

Tell Hicks Herpetologist extrordinary.

                                                                                                    Lace Monitor

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We had an excellent talk and presentation on Thursday on the fascinating subject of research and  field studies for the identification of rattlesnakes. Tell Hicks was the speaker who has a life time spent studying these beautiful creatures and painting them in oils. The Lace Monitor above shows the range of Tell's work..

Although Tell started his interest in snakes when he was a teenager in England he soon left home and started travelling round the world trying to learn all he could about his chosen subject. He started finding snakes in the most isolated places much of the time in the USA. Without any formal art training he was soon producing a range of fine and very detailed oil paintings of the numerous sub species of Rattlesnake.His paintings have been awarded professional recognition in recent years and are much in demand.

In an hours talk he could only touch on the subject but nevertheless the trials and tribulations of herping were very amusingly brought to life. He brought with him prints from his extensive range of work normally undertaken on commission together with caps and tee shirts all sporting his designs. It became clear that observing and studying wildlife is the same the world over and requires a lot of patience and field knowledge. Tell's work  has taken him to the dramatic Grand Canyon as well as our local  Quantocks in Somerset
He has a web site where you can see much more of his work.  Click here

Included on his home page is a well known US citizen who wished to acquire a tattoo based on Tells work. In the talk I had to clarify that the gentleman was not in fact Tell himself despite a slight resemblance.
He did end his presentation with a slide showing a beautiful English Adder which he agreed was as striking as any overseas rattlesnake.

Tell has given many talks to us in the Wildlife Trust in Somerset and elsewhere in the UK and spends a fair time in the USA so we were very pleased to get the chance to meet with him again.

Starlings roosting displays.

Just checked the Hot Line for news about the starlings.

The Starling Hotline at 07866 554142 is NOW OPEN and starlings have been gathering locally round Langport for some time now. Last year the Hotline recommended visiting during the week or at DAWN which it says is just as good. Ham Wall is said to be the current  roosting locations.

See my earlier posts on the subject.