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A peoples' manifesto for wildlife
wild edges
Posts: 10,497
Has anyone had a chance to read through this yet? There's some interesting ideas in there that are of interest to gardeners such as:
Planning approval required for fake grass on more than 10% of a garden.
Compulsary hedgehog holes in fences.
Incentives for home composting.
It's the first draft and they welcome feedback. Personally I think it's a good start, too weak in some areas and too strong to be feasible in others but at least it's ambitious and entirely based on well researched fact. There are some eye opening facts presented too which everyone in the UK should be aware of as it shows where our money is being spent and how corrupt some of our government policies are.
aaaand without wanting to start up on the whole cat argument again I find this document quite weak on any proposals to tackle the problem of cats killing wildlife. It just goes to show that if you want to get the people on board you can't threaten their liberty when it comes to fluffy pets. 
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
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When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
I agree it's a useful start .... but very little here about bees / beekeeping.
This is surprising given that Professor Dave Coulson is one of the contributors.
Bee xx
A single bee creates just one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime
I think it's almost always better to conserve an environment rather than a single species, so in the main @treehugger80, I agree with you.
On brownfield sites though, it's not straightforward. We are currently trying to get permission to convert a small ramshackle barn in the centre of a town into housing. The town council are in favour, but the Planners won't give permission basically because they aren't sure and they don't have the funds to come out and actually look at it. It's safer to refuse, where there are close neighbours who might complain for any reason, whether genuine or spurious. Greenfield sites are much clearer cut. If the town could not build anywhere because the planners (who are based 20 miles away) could not afford to make a decision on a small piece of derelict land, they'd be left in limbo for no good reason.
Would you say 'only the brownfield sites with planning approved have to be previously developed'? In which case the big house-builders would simply buy up all the potential sites and sit on them.
Would you say 'only the brownfield sites where planning reasonably could be achieved?' In which case who would fund the planners to make a decision in principle on every site in a district with or without an application?
There's also a contrary argument which says that some brownfield sites have become immensely useful as wildlife havens within urban areas, where it desperately needs a home, whereas one farmed field more or less probably makes a less critical difference.
I agree with stopping building on flood plains. The EA do stop a lot of it. But the big house builders work to different rules to everyone else, unfortunately.
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
NO, i don't work for Sheffield Council or Amey, and yes I am a great supporter of wildlife and own quite a lot of trees in Sheffield.
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border