Baby Goeldi monkey born at Paignton Zoo
PAIGNTON Zoo has a new addition to its collection – a baby Goeldi Monkey, born last month.
Goeldi’s monkeys are small primates with shaggy black hair, claw-like nails and long tails. They inhabit areas of the Amazon rainforest across southern Colombia, eastern Ecuador and Peru, western Brazil and northern Bolivia.
Paigtnon Zoo says: “They live in small family groups, moving quickly through the trees in the lower canopy.
When excited, these small monkeys make a bird-like sound to communicate. In times of danger, the adults hide the youngster in dense vegetation whilst they distract the predator.”
Mothers generally give brith to a single youngster after a gestation period lasting 150-160 days and it is carried by the mother for the first three weeks, after which the father shares the carrying.
Covid means the zoo is closed.
COUNTRYSIDE campaigners have welcomed a decision to refuse permission to build more homes near Chivenor in North Devon.
The decision follows evidence, based on the government figures, that North Devon has delivered a third more homes than were actually required over the last five years
North Devon’s Planning Committee last week responded to evidence from local objectors, including countryside charity Devon CPRE, with an emphatic refusal for 59 new homes at Chivenor Cross near Braunton.
Councillors voted 9-3 against the application, which was not in the Local Plan and had been refused before, but it was resubmitted because the authority was deemed to lack a five-year Housing Land Supply.
Devon CPRE welcomed the planning refusal as a “significant statement that North Devon Council is not prepared to allow the area to become a developers’ free-for-all just because the planning system is broken”.
North Devon was the first planning authority to receive a detailed briefing document, which is being circulated to all the Devon planning committees, prepared by Devon CPRE trustee Steve Crowther.
Steve said: “Supported by the detailed evidence that we and others submitted, the Committee took the strong stance that they should stand by their previous policy-based decision not to allow building on this site, despite the temptation to tip another 59 houses into their leaking Land Supply bucket.
“This is hugely encouraging. Our evidence highlighted that the Courts are increasingly weighing in to support authorities who are not prepared to be ‘bounced’ into making bad, contra-policy decisions just because of this trap called the Housing Land Supply.”
The Land Supply metric, part of the government’s National Planning Policy Framework, tilts the balance in favour of ‘sustainable development’ if the authority cannot demonstrate that it can meet its housing land supply targets over the next 5 years. According to CPRE, up to twothirds of local authorities nationally could be in this situation.
“This false measure, which rendered the North Devon & Torridge Local Plan out-of-date after 14 months, is seen as a developer’s charter. In essence, the longer they fail to build the permissions they have been granted, the more permissions they can demand. Now, though, recent High Court and Appeal Court decisions have confirmed that councillors are perfectly entitled to continue to refuse applications that are unsustainable or don’t comply with their broader planning policies.”
The CPRE says the refusal comes hot on the heels of a government measurement showing that almost all Devon’s authorities have overdelivered against their housing requirements for the last five years. The Housing Delivery Test, published in January, showed that Devon as a whole had provided over 6,000 more homes than were actually required over the past 5 years.
Devon CPRE Director Penny Mills says, “The government’s own figures vindicate what we have been saying for years.