WILDER SUFFOLK

Planning helps shape the places that people live and work in and has a huge influence over how and where wildlife can thrive. Our vision is for a Wilder Suffolk, where good planning protects our most precious wildlife and wild places while creating new nature-rich areas in our towns and countryside.

BY RUPERT MASEFIELD

Afuture with more wildlife and more places where people can enjoy nature is possible. Good planning can help protect wildlife and restore the nature we have lost from our landscape and lives, but we must start now.

Planning – the kind that decides what, where and how something gets built –can be a difficult and often emotive subject, especially in a rural county like Suffolk. Few people relish the prospect of a large new housing development on their doorstep and the transition to green energy is putting communities and wildlife on the Suffolk Coast under pressure from a flurry of major new energy infrastructure projects.

Suffolk Wildlife Trust is not against all development, but we are for nature. We urgently need to stop burning fossil fuels to heat our homes and generate our electricity, and we recognise that at present, new houses do need to be built somewhere. However, we must ensure

Pollution

We must stop burning fossil fuels to heat our homes and produce electricity.

how we restore the habitats and biodiversity that have disappeared in the past 50 years. We need to plan for a Wilder Suffolk.

Creating a Nature Recovery Network

that we plan and build our new houses, hospitals, wind turbines and solar farms in the best places and the best way possible for wildlife and people. We need to go even further though, and start planning for nature itself and

The idea of a Nature Recovery Network was borne out of the need for more, bigger and better places for nature to reverse wildlife declines. This network for nature would create and restore habitats across the landscape, connecting nature reserves and other wildlife sites to each other and giving

Habitat Loss

wildlife more places to thrive.

Now, thanks to the Environment Act 2021, Suffolk, along with the rest of England, is going to be creating its own Local Nature Recovery Strategy, which will provide the blueprint for restoring wildlife habitats in Suffolk. This will make up part of a national Nature Recovery Network.

To turn this blueprint into a reality, habitat will need to be both created and restored. One way this can happen is for developers to be required to create new habitat themselves – or fund habitat creation by others.

Biodiversity Net Gain

Nature conservation organisations have led the way in showing that you can increase biodiversity and save threatened wildlife by creating and managing habitats for nature. This approach has helped save species like the bittern and

Uk Environment Act 2021 And Biodiversity Net Gain

The Environment Act 2021 means that Suffolk, along with the rest of England, is going to be creating its own Local Nature Recovery Strategy, which will provide the blueprint for restoring wildlife habitats across the county. This will make up part of a national Nature Recovery Network. The Act requires Government to set targets for improving air and water quality, tackling waste, increasing recycling, halting the decline of species, and improving our natural environment.

Biodiversity Net Gain is an approach to development, and/or land management, that aims to leave nature in a measurably better state than it was beforehand.

marsh harrier from the brink of extinction and is something Suffolk Wildlife Trust has been doing on its nature reserves for decades – from engineering wetland habitats at Carlton Marshes and natural regeneration at Arger Fen to the wilding journey we are about to embark on at Martlesham Wilds.

It is also how people all over Suffolk help wildlife in their gardens, schools, and local communities by creating more areas that have the things wildlife needs. The same thing is possible on a larger scale and entire neighborhoods can be made more wildlife-friendly by doing things like putting up swift and bat boxes, planting native trees, and letting lawns and verges go wild.

Applied to a new housing (or any other kind of) development, this approach has become known as Biodiversity Net Gain. Simply put, by creating habitats that support more species, you can increase the overall amount and variety of wildlife even when some less wildliferich land is used for housing and other development.

Once we have made sure that development protects existing wildlife, Biodiversity Net Gain could help to create the Nature Recovery Network if developers restore and manage wildlife habitats in the right places. Suffolk County Council has committed to achieving double the proposed national minimum Biodiversity Net Gain for its housing programme – from 10% to 20% – delivering added benefit for species and improving ecological connectivity. This will make a significant contribution to creating a Nature Recovery Network in Suffolk.

Environmental limits

While this sounds exciting, we must not get carried away by the idea that we can restore nature by building houses – we can’t. Only so much development can take place before it starts to harm the environment, whether that is a result of air or water pollution, habitat loss, disturbance to sensitive wildlife, or myriad other effects that put pressure on natural resources and ecosystems. We need to know the limits of the natural environment to accommodate new development. If that limit is exceeded, development will harm the natural environment and us, the people who depend on it.

RIGHT: Natural regeneration at Arger Fen is providing a mix of habitats for wildlife.

One of Suffolk’s most stressed environmental assets is water. Development that increases the demand for freshwater leaves less of this precious natural resource for wildlife in our rivers and wetlands. It also puts people, businesses and agriculture at greater risk from droughts. This is creating an increasing threat to some of our fenland nature reserves and rare species like fen raft spiders and marsh orchids. Development that has been designed to reduce water use, or even be water- neutral, can help to make sure environmental limits are not exceeded. One development we were strongly opposed to was Sizewell C. However, our years of advocacy and working with partners enabled us to reduce the area of SSSI lost, as well as creating more compensation habitat. With the RSPB, we proved the impacts on marsh harrier, resulting in a much larger area of mitigation for hunting. We pushed for better, more sensitive mitigation for the nationally important barbastelle bat, leading to bigger, wider and darker

Flood

Drought

We have a vision of a Wilder Suffolk, where built-up areas are places where wildlife can thrive.

buffer zones, and helped prove that the natterjack toad population needed better protection, with more ponds and habitat.

In addition, last autumn, we teamed up with RSPB and The Woodland Trust to urge National Grid to abandon the option of taking new high voltage power lines through Hintlesham Wood, one of Suffolk’s largest remaining ancient woodlands. Following our campaign, National Grid announced they would instead go around the outside of the woodland, citing the feedback they received in response to their consultation on route options as one of the reasons for their decision.

Allied with nature

Nature itself can even help protect the wider environment from the impacts of development. As we confront the growing threat of the climate crisis, we are faced with extreme weather events that can cause flooding, droughts and air pollution.

On large developments, more impermeable surfaces, like roofs and roads, create surface water runoff, which in turn can cause serious flooding. Floodplain wetlands can help reduce this risk, storing water and providing a place for it to collect away from properties and businesses. Capturing runoff from roads and carparks and using it to create wet habitats like pools and swales can slow the flow of water and help to clean it before it gets back into rivers and streams, too.

Air pollution is associated with serious health problems like asthma, and air quality is often much worse in highly developed areas. Planting native trees and hedgerows can improve air quality by removing harmful pollution from the air, whilst also cooling the air temperature in times of extreme heat. Development that favours walking and cycling over car usage also helps improve air quality. And of course, wetlands, trees and hedgerows are also great habitats for wildlife, t00. For development to be genuinely good for nature, it must be ambitious. It must protect the nature we have now, respect the limits of the natural environment and increase nature by creating and restoring habitats for wildlife. If planning in Suffolk can deliver the kind of development that achieves these three things, it will be a big step towards a future with more wildlife.

Find out more about the Planning and Advocacy Team suffolkwildlifetrust.org/wilder-planning

Brambling Watercolour and ink.

Jamey Douglas is Digital Marketing Officer for Suffolk Wildlife Trust and is presently studying for an MA in illustration. Follow Jamey on Instagram.

Noticing

Wolf on the moon Watercolour and ink. Jamey volunteered at the UK Wolf Conservation Trust and developed a love for this animal.