Hobson's Choice? Town Planning & Biodiversity

One rainy winter I was living in a Somerset village just outside Bristol, without car or cycle. My preferred route to the shops was straight across the fields, slipping through cowpats and hoof-prints full of water. I climbed through a barbed wire fence, dropped down into a stream and scaled the bank. Emerging into woodland, the rustic territory gave way to signs of habitation; an enticing boardwalk led the way from here. Accompanied by brave ripples of robin song and artist's palette of fungi and fallen leaves, I returned the same way laden with shopping but lighter of mood (and carbon footprint to boot).

Desire lines map the places where town planning and free spirits meet. They are the paths made by man or beast that developers didn't foresee. Shortcuts across grass or municipal flowerbeds are sometimes eventually paved, but planners are perhaps getting better at imagining the routes humans - and hedgehogs - might want to tread. Conservation charity the RSPB is working in partnership with Barratt Developments to give nature a home at new building sites by implementing ideas such as hedgehog highways (access built into housing plans such as holes in fences, and hedgerow corridors). The charity has a Head of Sustainable Development responsible for Urban Recovery (looking at urban bird species of concern), and will soon recruit a Swift Ambassador.

RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) offers a Designing For Biodiversity guide. When I visited Phase 1 of local premium development Ninewells Cambridge, a quick sketch of bat and swift boxes had only recently been added (admittedly a bit of an afterthought). Their luxury literature states: 'Ninewells is as much about the natural world as it is about the connection with the city... did you know that Ninewells takes its name from a local nature reserve? Nine Wells, a historically important source of the Hobson Conduit, once provided Cambridge with its drinking water'.

The human inhabitants of Ninewells are lucky. Paths and cycleways will lead to Addenbrooke's hospital and bus station and open countryside via 'green fingers' landscaped with flowerbeds, trees, hedgerows and allotments. Quite utopian really. The idea of the cul-de-sac is old hat, and thank goodness for that. There's one near me that swallows people up and never lets them out. The far perimeter of their housing estate was planted with trees to disguise the point at which the development met the greenbelt. A high fence still reaches all the way round. Desire lines to the public footpath across the fields next door never had a chance.

Greenbelt, Sawston, Cambridgeshire. Photo Jo Sinclair

Rewilding Takes Flight

Hans Hoffman wild boar piglet illustration

The conservation charity Rewilding Britain launched last week. In the emotive brouhaha I fleetingly imagined savage animals let loose to take revenge on us. With one swipe of fangs or claws they'd get us back. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth for the systemic extinctions we leave in our wake. Then I remembered this famous You Tube sensation. (PLAY)

Narrating the story of 'trophic cascade' George Monbiot tells us what happens when a keystone species is given the chance to fit comfortably into a new habitat, creating a rapid positive effect on the whole ecosystem. Springwatch told the same tale this year, this time with English beavers.

Rewilding Britain gives some UK examples on the website, and a blog entry by Martin Harper talks about conservation in action at the RSPB. Even in intensively farmed East Anglia there are success stories, such as Lakenheath RSPB's cranes. In 2007 these birds returned and bred successfully (the first time in England in four hundred years). The Great Crane Project website points out that these are wild birds, discerning individuals who chose a good spot where the RSPB are able to provide extra protection. They are not part of a reintroduction project.

Next week I'll be far away from my East Anglian flatlands. I'll be in South Wales and near the Forest of Dean. One of these days in their garden my relatives might find wild boar rootling, an adder basking or a goshawk flashing through with outstretched talons. And might there be a lynx or a wolf in my niece and nephew's lifetime? Time will tell.

Meanwhile following the first conclusive sighting of a pine marten in England in over 100 years Shropshire lad Paul Evans referred us to his interesting article about ‘the weasley outlaw in the shadows’. Amateur wildlife recorder Dave Pearce took two photographs in a wood in Shropshire last week and Evan’s interesting article points out that the animals thought to be extinct from England may have been present all along. But Cambridge? Really? We have so few trees. There’s a Cambridge near Stroud in Gloucestershire too isn’t there? That would make more sense. But Northampton is mentioned too. Keep your eyes peeled (and that includes roadkill)...