How does new housing address the RSPB findings?
I HAVE never felt so impelled to respond to a letter as I did when I read a letter written by TMY “New development does bring benefits to the local wildlife”
Could TMY please explain how new housing developments installation of bird feeders and bird and bat boxes addresses the loss of wildlife identified by the RSPB in their publication the state of nature 2019 summarised below.
Evidence has proven that natural habitats are far better for sustaining wildlife than the suggested reliance upon homeowners to provide artificial provision of the right kind and in the most appropriate locations.
“State of Nature report 2019”: loss of nature since 1970.
• 15 per cent of species under
threat of extinction and 2 per cent of species have already gone for good.
• Average abundance of wildlife has fallen by 13 per cent with the steepest losses in the last 10 years.
• 41 per cent of UK species
studied have fallen and 133 species have already been lost from our shores.
• Butterflies and moths, down 17 per cent and 25 per cent respectively. Numbers of high brown fritillary and grayling butterflies, have fallen by more than
three quarters.
• The average amount of
mammals has fallen by 26 per cent and the wild cat and greater mouse-eared bat are almost extinct.
There is no doubt that there is a national shortage of affordable housing and bungalows.
Many of these new housing developments do not address these shortages in a meaningful way.
There is also a national awareness of the increase in flooding.
Greenspaces create natural corridors for wildlife as well as being pockets to collect rainwater and assist with the effects of global warming.
We are now at a crucial point to all act together to reverse the decline of those animals at risk and to hold our planning departments to account to ensure that the environment we leave for the generation to follow ours is left with an environment that is still the green and pleasant land it always has been and we are at risk of losing.
S McDowell