Ecology reporting
The latest rewritten (2nd attempt) ecology report for development South of Cutbush Lane Shinfield makes interesting reading.
I think the University of Reading’s agents were called J Krowling or something like that any way. They have expanded the original document by adding multiple references and case studies in order to significantly expand the document – surely not trying to hide detail in the long grass?
Let’s talk snakes or a singular snake. The desktop research shows multiple snakes previously found north of this proposed development. An area now fully built over so you might think these snakes have possibly moved to the nearest fields?
But no, the latest ‘field study’ (they won’t be able to many more of these as all the fields will be gone) shows they managed to see one grass snake.
The sex and age of the snake were
unfortunately not recorded but WBC did send it a consultation paper.
As it was only one snake it is assumed it was only passing through. Given this they assume reptiles are not an issue so it’s OK to go ahead with the proposed development.
Strangely a local resident’s cat who loves to explore these fields and to bring ‘presents’ home for its owner, managed to bring home two grass snakes, which the owner took to an animal rescue centre and then released them back into these fields. Perhaps they should employ the cat for any future reptile field studies.
The JK field study was taken in August/ September which surprisingly happened to be just after the field was close mown!
What a coincidence as this happened in the previous study as well. It is little wonder they struggled to find too much evidence of snakes if a heavy mower has just been all over the field.
The JK study placed 61 reptile monitoring (felt, tin and oduline) areas across the field to monitor any reptile activity.
As this was after the close mowing, they did a wonderful job of disguising these areas as the dog walkers who use these fields at least twice a day did not see them – excellent camouflage work guys!
The real snake in the grass is that this is just another example of how little respect developers and Wokingham planners have for residents and how broken and unethical the Wokingham planning process is.
We could not make it up but they apparently can!
Given that the developer has already marked out the field way before the end of consultation yet alone planning evaluation we can only assume that the snakes have won again! Jim Frewin, Shinfield