On the wrong tracks

HS2 Ltd has got its nature figures all wrong. It’s time for the Government to halt construction and do the job properly!

The Wildlife Trusts have published a fresh review of evidence surrounding HS2 Ltd’s claims that there will be ‘no net loss’ of wildlife along the route of the high-speed rail line. Its conclusion is damning: HS2 has made fundamental flaws in the way it assesses the value of nature along the construction path, with natural habitats grossly undervalued and significant wildlife already destroyed. Furthermore, the impact of its nature compensation measures is exaggerated.

valuable habitats, it creates a barrier to less mobile species.

The new report HS2 Double Jeopardy: How the UK’s largest infrastructure project undervalued nature and overvalued its compensation measures finds that HS2 Ltd’s ‘No Net Loss’ metric – their ‘accounting tool’ for assessing impacts on nature – is untested, out of date and fundamentally flawed.

The research also found watercourses, ponds and trees had been missed out of the data, and problems with the way

Sign our open letter

The Wildlife Trusts have published an open letter to the Secretaries of State for Transport and the Environment urging them to work together to address the new evidence and asking for an immediate pause on construction. You can sign the letter too. To add your name and read the full report follow the links from wildlifetrusts. org/hs2

The review finds that the first phase, which covers the 140 miles of track between London and Birmingham, will cause at least 7.9 times more nature loss than HS2 Ltd has accounted for. The major construction project is currently ploughing through the heart of Buckinghamshire and parts of Oxfordshire, bisecting the Chilterns.

Large parts of our Calvert Jubilee nature reserve have been commandeered by the company and the route cuts along the side of Finemere Wood. Construction has had a devastating impact on wildlife in and around both reserves, with a huge swathe of countryside being turned into a vast construction site largely devoid of life. Not only does the scale of damage remove nature was being valued. For example, many tree-lined, well-established and species-rich hedgerows, which provide berries, shelter and nesting places for wildlife, have been given a lower nature value than the new hedgerows that HS2 Ltd is planning to plant.

“We know that HS2 Ltd has been destroying nature on our patch and our new report shows the damage will be so much worse than we feared,” says BBOWT Chief Executive Estelle Bailey. “The calculations on nature loss and restoration are all wrong – they’ve ignored important habitats and turned a blind eye to others. It’s astonishing and terrifying.

“This vast infrastructure project is taking a wrecking ball to wildlife, and communities are in despair at losing the wild places they love. They will never get these back.”

HS2 Ltd should re-map existing habitats along Phases 1 and 2a, correcting mapping errors, applying the correct nature values to habitats, and ensuring no habitats are excluded. It is essential they recalculate the total impacts to nature, and Government must respond swiftly, while there is still time to change the scheme’s design and delivery to achieve a minimum 10% net gain in biodiversity. It is essential that HS2 Ltd pauses all construction and enabling works while these new findings are assessed by the Government.