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Housebuilders supply only half of promised nature-friendly features, survey finds

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Thursday, December 12, 2024

Nearly half of the nature-friendly enhancements promised by developers building new homes have failed to materialise, according to a study of almost 6,000 new houses.Developers are failing to keep legally binding pledges to boost wildlife when building new homes, according to the survey by University of Sheffield academics for Wild Justice.When researchers visited 42 completed housing estates in England to check if ecological enhancements including newly planted trees, bird boxes, ponds and hedgerows had been provided as stipulated by planning permissions, they found just 53% had been delivered.Many specific measures to boost wildlife had not been provided. Thirty-nine per cent of trees detailed on planting plans were missing or dead; 75% of bat and bird boxes were absent; 83% of hedgehog highways had not been provided and researchers could find no evidence of any of the bug boxes detailed in any of the developers’ plans. Nearly half of the native hedges promised did not exist and 60% of the planned wet grassland had not been created.Labour has vowed to build 1.5m new homes during this parliament and the housing secretary, Angela Rayner, this week suggested that newts and other endangered wildlife were an obstacle to construction that the government would sweep aside.New biodiversity net gain measures introduced in spring oblige new housing to create 10% more natural habitats than those lost to development, with these regulations implying that a housebuilding boom can occur alongside the government’s legal commitment to halt species decline by 2030.Kiera Chapman of the University of Sheffield, the lead author of the report, said: “With their recent comments on newts and bat tunnels, Labour are creating a smokescreen based on the idea that there is a conflict between environmental and social goals.“Our research has shown that developers are not only delivering poor outcomes for wildlife, but also for people. When it comes to priorities, this is not an either/or situation: humans need healthy green spaces to flourish.“Our report shows that the protections on which the government is relying to deliver biodiversity gains are not working in practice, so that their push for 1.5m homes is likely to cause significant harms to nature.”Malcolm Tait, a professor of planning at the University of Sheffield and co-author of the report, said: “The government has just announced ambitious housing targets, on the assumption that the planning system can ensure harms to nature are mitigated.“But our research shows that housebuilders aren’t implementing the ecological enhancements to help nature that they have promised. What we have revealed is a huge, systemic issue and an urgent need for the planning enforcement system to be given the resources it needs to protect wildlife from harm.”Between June and August 2024, researchers visited 42 new housing estates across five local planning authorities in England, covering more than 291 hectares of land.Alongside the other absences, the researchers found that 85% of reptile refuges were not present on the ground and 82% of woodland edge seed mixes had failed to materialise.When wildlife-friendly features had been created, they were often implemented badly: 59% of wildflower grasslands were found to be sown incorrectly or otherwise damaged, leading to far fewer flowers and associated invertebrates than would be expected.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionChris Packham, the co-founder of Wild Justice, said of housebuilders flouting these rules: “We make laws – they disregard them. They promise us wildlife – we get nothing. They are laughing all the way to the bank – and bankrupting our biodiversity. There’s a human housing shortage, no doubt about that, but if these cheats have their way there will never be any homes for wildlife. It’s time to catch them, fine them or bang them up.”The least compliant site provided 0% of what had been promised in the plans, while the best new housing estate scored 95%.The report found the type of developer, size of development or the area of the country made little difference to the actual benefits for nature that were provided.The report said: “In practice there is effectively very little regulation of developer behaviour in installing measures for ecological mitigation and enhancement. In the worst developments, where a large proportion of ecological mitigation and enhancement measures are missing, it appears that these companies may be gambling that no one will have time to check whether they have met the conditions of their planning permission or not.“This is particularly worrying as we may be moving towards a system dominated by the political logic that we can urbanise more land at a faster pace by mitigating ecological damage.”The researchers visited developments in both urban and rural areas at least once, with two researchers walking every street and all publicly accessible areas, checking every tree in each public space and examining every house for bird and bat boxes.

Developers in England deliver 53% of features such as trees and bird boxes demanded in planning permissions, study saysNearly half of the nature-friendly enhancements promised by developers building new homes have failed to materialise, according to a study of almost 6,000 new houses.Developers are failing to keep legally binding pledges to boost wildlife when building new homes, according to the survey by University of Sheffield academics for Wild Justice. Continue reading...

Nearly half of the nature-friendly enhancements promised by developers building new homes have failed to materialise, according to a study of almost 6,000 new houses.

Developers are failing to keep legally binding pledges to boost wildlife when building new homes, according to the survey by University of Sheffield academics for Wild Justice.

When researchers visited 42 completed housing estates in England to check if ecological enhancements including newly planted trees, bird boxes, ponds and hedgerows had been provided as stipulated by planning permissions, they found just 53% had been delivered.

Many specific measures to boost wildlife had not been provided. Thirty-nine per cent of trees detailed on planting plans were missing or dead; 75% of bat and bird boxes were absent; 83% of hedgehog highways had not been provided and researchers could find no evidence of any of the bug boxes detailed in any of the developers’ plans. Nearly half of the native hedges promised did not exist and 60% of the planned wet grassland had not been created.

Labour has vowed to build 1.5m new homes during this parliament and the housing secretary, Angela Rayner, this week suggested that newts and other endangered wildlife were an obstacle to construction that the government would sweep aside.

New biodiversity net gain measures introduced in spring oblige new housing to create 10% more natural habitats than those lost to development, with these regulations implying that a housebuilding boom can occur alongside the government’s legal commitment to halt species decline by 2030.

Kiera Chapman of the University of Sheffield, the lead author of the report, said: “With their recent comments on newts and bat tunnels, Labour are creating a smokescreen based on the idea that there is a conflict between environmental and social goals.

“Our research has shown that developers are not only delivering poor outcomes for wildlife, but also for people. When it comes to priorities, this is not an either/or situation: humans need healthy green spaces to flourish.

“Our report shows that the protections on which the government is relying to deliver biodiversity gains are not working in practice, so that their push for 1.5m homes is likely to cause significant harms to nature.”

Malcolm Tait, a professor of planning at the University of Sheffield and co-author of the report, said: “The government has just announced ambitious housing targets, on the assumption that the planning system can ensure harms to nature are mitigated.

“But our research shows that housebuilders aren’t implementing the ecological enhancements to help nature that they have promised. What we have revealed is a huge, systemic issue and an urgent need for the planning enforcement system to be given the resources it needs to protect wildlife from harm.”

Between June and August 2024, researchers visited 42 new housing estates across five local planning authorities in England, covering more than 291 hectares of land.

Alongside the other absences, the researchers found that 85% of reptile refuges were not present on the ground and 82% of woodland edge seed mixes had failed to materialise.

When wildlife-friendly features had been created, they were often implemented badly: 59% of wildflower grasslands were found to be sown incorrectly or otherwise damaged, leading to far fewer flowers and associated invertebrates than would be expected.

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Chris Packham, the co-founder of Wild Justice, said of housebuilders flouting these rules: “We make laws – they disregard them. They promise us wildlife – we get nothing. They are laughing all the way to the bank – and bankrupting our biodiversity. There’s a human housing shortage, no doubt about that, but if these cheats have their way there will never be any homes for wildlife. It’s time to catch them, fine them or bang them up.”

The least compliant site provided 0% of what had been promised in the plans, while the best new housing estate scored 95%.

The report found the type of developer, size of development or the area of the country made little difference to the actual benefits for nature that were provided.

The report said: “In practice there is effectively very little regulation of developer behaviour in installing measures for ecological mitigation and enhancement. In the worst developments, where a large proportion of ecological mitigation and enhancement measures are missing, it appears that these companies may be gambling that no one will have time to check whether they have met the conditions of their planning permission or not.

“This is particularly worrying as we may be moving towards a system dominated by the political logic that we can urbanise more land at a faster pace by mitigating ecological damage.”

The researchers visited developments in both urban and rural areas at least once, with two researchers walking every street and all publicly accessible areas, checking every tree in each public space and examining every house for bird and bat boxes.

Read the full story here.
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Defra asks England’s biggest landowners to come up with plans to restore nature

Exclusive: Representatives of king, National Trust and others called on to work together to protect environmentUK politics live – latest updatesSteve Reed called in some of England’s biggest landowners for a meeting on Thursday, asking them to come up with meaningful plans to restore nature on their estates.Representatives for King Charles and Prince William were among those at the meeting, asked by the environment secretary to draft new land management plans to help meet the country’s legal Environment Act targets. Continue reading...

Steve Reed called in some of England’s biggest landowners for a meeting on Thursday, asking them to come up with meaningful plans to restore nature on their estates.Representatives for King Charles and Prince William were among those at the meeting, asked by the environment secretary to draft new land management plans to help meet the country’s legal Environment Act targets.The landowners also included third-sector organisations such as the National Trust, RSPB and the Wildlife Trusts, along with representatives from the government estate such as the Ministry of Defence and Natural England.Between them, the assembled “National Estate for Nature” group own 10% of England’s land, making their cooperation crucial if ministers are to meet legally binding environment targets and stop the decline of nature.Reed called them to action to collectively protect and restore nature on their estates across England, asking them to report back on potential new approaches for sustainable land use, land management, change, or investment. He said the group should set minimum standards for land management plans, with clear milestones for nature restoration and protections.He said: “Landowners must go further and faster to restore our natural world. The National Estate for Nature, who manage a tenth of the land in this country, have a responsibility to future generations to leave the environment in a better state. We have a unique opportunity to work together on common sense changes that create a win-win for nature, the economy, and make the best use of the land around us.”Just 8% of the land and sea in England is protected for nature. The government has a target to reach 30% by 2030, but wildlife groups say the proportion of land “effectively protected” for nature is even lower than the official statistic, at 2.93%. Nature across England continues to be in decline, with wild bird numbers decreasing each year. The 2023 state of nature report described the UK as one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, based on declines since the 1970s.The Labour government hopes to accelerate efforts to meet these targetsand recently legalised the wild release of beavers and announced a land use framework that will provide guidance on how to best use land for food and nature.The environmental campaigner Guy Shrubsole said: “Major landowners in England like the Forestry Commission, crown estate and water companies own millions of acres of land – it’s only right that we expect them to repair the badly damaged habitats that they own.”He argued that large landowners should make their plans to protect nature public so that they can be scrutinised and held to account: “The government must mandate these landowners to publish their plans for nature restoration, so the public can see how the land is being looked after on our behalf – and change the outdated legal duties of public bodies to prioritise restoring ecosystems and fixing the climate crisis.”skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionHarry Bowell, the director of land and nature at the National Trust, said: “We are delighted to join the National Estate for Nature group, bringing the National Trust’s stewardship of 250,000 hectares to the table. As the government’s land use framework makes clear, a transformation in the use of land is needed if we are to meet our nature and climate targets. The biggest landowners – us included – have the power, and responsibility, to drive forward that transformation.”Further quarterly meetings are expected to focus on developing and implementing agreed on-the-ground plans to drive nature’s recovery.

Green leader Adrian Ramsay: Labour’s ‘growth v nature’ framing is an outrage

Co-leader says deprioritisation of net zero is ‘extremely dangerous’ as he rejects ‘nimby-in-chief’ characterisationLabour’s push for economic growth at the expense of climate and nature is “extremely dangerous”, the co-leader of the Green party has said.Adrian Ramsay, the MP for Waveney Valley between Norfolk and Suffolk, was one of the five Green MPs elected to parliament last July in their best ever result. He said and his colleagues knew they would be holding Labour to account, but did not expect to be as disappointed as they have been. Continue reading...

Labour’s push for economic growth at the expense of climate and nature is “extremely dangerous”, the co-leader of the Green party has said.Adrian Ramsay, the MP for Waveney Valley between Norfolk and Suffolk, was one of the five Green MPs elected to parliament last July in their best ever result. He said and his colleagues knew they would be holding Labour to account, but did not expect to be as disappointed as they have been.In recent weeks, Labour has given the green light to airport expansion and vowed to change planning rules to deprioritise nature, while ministers have repeatedly disparaged bats and newts and ridiculed measures to protect fish. The chancellor Rachel Reeves has suggested economic growth trumps the government’s legally binding target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050, and there are suggestions the national wealth fund, meant for green projects, will be coopted for defence.Ramsay said: “This whole depiction the government’s coming up with is completely false and actually extremely dangerous, because green spaces are crucial to people’s wellbeing, crucial to the natural environment, and we can and must do development in a way that not just protects nature … the government is signed up to a requirement to restore 30% of land and sea in the UK for nature by 2030.“And when Labour talks about growth versus nature, it sort of castigates communities who are working to protect their community, protect the environment from being trodden on by a planning system that that should be there to protect them, but the government’s looking at removing those safeguards.”Ramsay also questioned whether Boris Johnson was a greener prime minister than Keir Starmer, saying: “[Johnson] did have some understanding of the need to regenerate the natural world, which Labour are very weak on. While there were early signs of some positive moves on renewable energy targets, that’s now being undermined by climate-wrecking decisions around things like airport expansion.”Ramsay, who is co-leader with fellow MP Carla Denyer, has had a bruising start to his parliamentary career. One of his biggest critics has been Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, who has accused him of being against renewable infrastructure.Miliband’s criticisms of Ramsay have resulted in the Green MP being labelled the “UK’s nimby-in-chief” after he used his first day in parliament to call for a pause on plans for a route of 520 pylons passing through his constituency. Ramsay says he is representing his constituents, who want alternatives to pylons to be discussed before they are built. His critics, including Miliband, say alternatives are too slow and expensive to implement and will impede the government in reaching its target to decarbonise the grid by 2030.Before Ramsay was an MP, he was for many years a Green councillor and worked for renewables campaign groups. Of being referred to as a nimby, he said: “I think that the claims are so absurd that they are laughable. I mean, people have called me Mr Renewables, because my whole career and campaigning background since I was a teenager has been in advancing action on climate and in particular action on renewables. I’m the first to say we’ve got to see more renewables.”MPs for the rightwing Reform party have also opposed pylons as part of their drive to cancel net zero, of which Ramsay said: “Reform have jumped on a bandwagon quite recently. There’s been a cross-party group with the other four parties in East Anglia, working on these issues for some time.” He said the party was “selling people a pup” because “they’re trying to pretend that they’re there to support the ordinary person, but their policies would undermine the NHS, allow the ultra-rich plutocrats from abroad to buy up our democracy, and crucially, would stop the drive for net zero, which will bring down people’s bills and keep people’s homes warm.”There are also rumours that Labour is considering weakening plans aimed at ensuring all new homes are powered by renewables. Government sources say new homes will be “technology agnostic”, allowing housebuilders to meet climate targets how they like, rather than mandating solar panels and heat pumps.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotion“It would be an absolute outrage if the Labour government does not require renewable energy in all new homes,” Ramsay said. “People say to me all the time, why on earth are we seeing new homes being built without solar panels, without renewable heating systems? And the only reason the government wouldn’t do this is if they caved into the developers, because it’s a win-win all the way around.”Ramsay said he would continue to challenge Miliband. “My challenge to Ed Miliband is, don’t undermine the whole of your national strategy by allowing this major airport expansion to go ahead,” he said.“Don’t allow the whole of your carbon plan to be completely undermined by allowing the new Rosebank oilfield. They’re failing to focus on energy efficiency, how we insulate people’s homes to bring bills down, you’ve got to look at energy reduction as well as renewables if we’re going to deliver a green future.“And in terms of nature, they’re actively opposing the nature restoration agenda with this damaging suggestion that that economic success and nature are somehow at loggerheads. So that’s what’s led environmental campaigners like George Monbiot to increasingly suggest that Labour may be even worse on the environment than the Conservatives were.”

A Story About Salmon That Almost Had a Happy Ending

How tribal leaders, commercial fisherman and a few small environmental groups won an uphill campaign against dams.

Completion of the world’s largest dam removal project — which demolished four Klamath River hydroelectric dams on both sides of the California-Oregon border — has been celebrated as a monumental achievement, signaling the emerging political power of Native American tribes and the river-protection movement.True enough. It is fortunate that the project was approved in 2022 and completed last October, before the environmentally hostile Trump administration could interfere, and it is a reminder that committed, persistent campaigning for worthy environmental goals can sometimes overcome even the most formidable obstacles.How tribal leaders, commercial fisherman and a few modestly sized environmental groups won an uphill campaign to dismantle the dams is a serpentine, setback-studded saga worthy of inclusion in a collection of inspirational tales. The number of dams, their collective height (400 feet⁠⁠) and the extent of potential river habitat that has been reopened to salmon (420 miles⁠⁠) are all unprecedented.⁠The event is a crucial turning point, marking an end to efforts to harness the Klamath’s overexploited waterways to generate still more economic productivity, and at last addressing the basin’s many environmental problems by subtracting technology instead of adding it, by respecting nature instead of trying to overcome it. It’s an acknowledgment that dams have lifetimes, like everything else, and that their value in hydropower and irrigated water often ends up being dwarfed by their enormous environmental and social costs.

How nature organizes itself, from brain cells to ecosystems

McGovern Institute researchers develop a mathematical model to help define how modularity occurs in the brain — and across nature.

Look around, and you’ll see it everywhere: the way trees form branches, the way cities divide into neighborhoods, the way the brain organizes into regions. Nature loves modularity — a limited number of self-contained units that combine in different ways to perform many functions. But how does this organization arise? Does it follow a detailed genetic blueprint, or can these structures emerge on their own?A new study from MIT Professor Ila Fiete suggests a surprising answer.In findings published Feb. 18 in Nature, Fiete, an associate investigator in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and director of the K. Lisa Yang Integrative Computational Neuroscience (ICoN) Center at MIT, reports that a mathematical model called peak selection can explain how modules emerge without strict genetic instructions. Her team’s findings, which apply to brain systems and ecosystems, help explain how modularity occurs across nature, no matter the scale.Joining two big ideas“Scientists have debated how modular structures form. One hypothesis suggests that various genes are turned on at different locations to begin or end a structure. This explains how insect embryos develop body segments, with genes turning on or off at specific concentrations of a smooth chemical gradient in the insect egg,” says Fiete, who is the senior author of the paper. Mikail Khona PhD '25, a former graduate student and K. Lisa Yang ICoN Center graduate fellow, and postdoc Sarthak Chandra also led the study.Another idea, inspired by mathematician Alan Turing, suggests that a structure could emerge from competition — small-scale interactions can create repeating patterns, like the spots on a cheetah or the ripples in sand dunes.Both ideas work well in some cases, but fail in others. The new research suggests that nature need not pick one approach over the other. The authors propose a simple mathematical principle called peak selection, showing that when a smooth gradient is paired with local interactions that are competitive, modular structures emerge naturally. “In this way, biological systems can organize themselves into sharp modules without detailed top-down instruction,” says Chandra.Modular systems in the brainThe researchers tested their idea on grid cells, which play a critical role in spatial navigation as well as the storage of episodic memories. Grid cells fire in a repeating triangular pattern as animals move through space, but they don’t all work at the same scale — they are organized into distinct modules, each responsible for mapping space at slightly different resolutions.No one knows how these modules form, but Fiete’s model shows that gradual variations in cellular properties along one dimension in the brain, combined with local neural interactions, could explain the entire structure. The grid cells naturally sort themselves into distinct groups with clear boundaries, without external maps or genetic programs telling them where to go. “Our work explains how grid cell modules could emerge. The explanation tips the balance toward the possibility of self-organization. It predicts that there might be no gene or intrinsic cell property that jumps when the grid cell scale jumps to another module,” notes Khona.Modular systems in natureThe same principle applies beyond neuroscience. Imagine a landscape where temperatures and rainfall vary gradually over a space. You might expect species to be spread, and also to vary, smoothly over this region. But in reality, ecosystems often form species clusters with sharp boundaries — distinct ecological “neighborhoods” that don’t overlap.Fiete’s study suggests why: local competition, cooperation, and predation between species interact with the global environmental gradients to create natural separations, even when the underlying conditions change gradually. This phenomenon can be explained using peak selection — and suggests that the same principle that shapes brain circuits could also be at play in forests and oceans.A self-organizing worldOne of the researchers’ most striking findings is that modularity in these systems is remarkably robust. Change the size of the system, and the number of modules stays the same — they just scale up or down. That means a mouse brain and a human brain could use the same fundamental rules to form their navigation circuits, just at different sizes.The model also makes testable predictions. If it’s correct, grid cell modules should follow simple spacing ratios. In ecosystems, species distributions should form distinct clusters even without sharp environmental shifts.Fiete notes that their work adds another conceptual framework to biology. “Peak selection can inform future experiments, not only in grid cell research but across developmental biology.”

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