Tag Archives: Site of Special Scientific Interest
Another top wildlife site trashed – landowner given paltry fine and let off costs
News has been dripping out, about a significant incident of damage to an SSSI in North Yorkshire. The first we heard was on 21st August, when Defra announced a successful prosecution of a SSSI owner in North Yorkshire. The owner … Continue reading
Another SSSI to be trashed? Councillors approve solar farm on Rampisham Down
Rampisham Down SSSI (c) Miles King While we wait to hear whether Brandon Lewis will decide to call in the planning permission granted by Medway District Council for the new town on Lodge … Continue reading
Liz Truss gases on about Solar Farms, ignores threat from Maize.
The new Environment Secretary Liz Truss has led a charge against solar farms recently, announcing that they should not be used on productive farmland, which is there to produce food. She called them “a blight on the landscape” and announced … Continue reading
Director of Lodge Hill Developer Land Securities withdraws from becoming London Wildlife Trust trustee
Here’s an interesting story, just published in the Guardian. A Director of Land Securities, the FTSE 100 company who are the developers behind the planned destruction of Lodge Hill SSSI, was about to be appointed as a Trustee of London … Continue reading
Mark Reckless MP: destroying Lodge Hill will undermine national SSSI protection across the country
Part of Lodge Hill’s military past: a fictitious Newry Road with Iraqi posters (c) Miles King Rochester and Strood MP Mark Reckless is nobody’s fool. You may remember that earlier this year I wrote about his tirade against coastal … Continue reading
Mark Reckless MP for Lodge Hill rails against Natural England, Quangos, spiders, bugs and – vegetated shingle
Following yesterday’s blog on the latest machinations at Lodge Hill, I was informed that the local MP for the Lodge Hill area Mark Reckless, had not made any statement either for or against the development at Lodge Hill or the … Continue reading
Offsetting at Lodge Hill rears its ugly head again.
CIEEM held a conference on biodiversity offsetting last week, and I was lucky enough to be the first speaker. I had put in an abstract for a talk which was highly sceptical of offsetting and whether it would provide any … Continue reading
Keeping a Level Head
A Somerset Levels Wet Meadow (c) Miles King I feel almost reluctant to put pen to paper (metaphorically) on the issue of the floods and the Somerset Levels, because so much has been written or spoken in recent days fromn … Continue reading
Biodiversity Challenge 4: Broken Dreams
meetings meetings meetings ((c) By Agriculture And Stock Department, Publicity Branch via Wikimedia Commons) Todays blog completes my series this week of blogs looking at what Biodiversity Challenge achieved, looking back with the benefit of hindsight 20 years on. Biodiversity … Continue reading
Biodiversity Challenge 3: Habitats
Continuing my series to celebrate 20 years since the launch of Biodiversity Challenge: an Agenda for Conservation in the UK (yes I had a hand in the hubristic title), today I look at Habitats. Derek Ratcliffe had developed the criteria … Continue reading
a new nature blog 