Cuttlebrook

Somewhat reluctantly I've decided to get involved in the campaign to protect the nature reserve we have just moved in next to. The campaign leader Christina knocked on the door yesterday collecting petition signatures so I had declare that I was a wounded veteran local campaigner as there is no other sensible and more impactful thing to do than to support and follow anyone heroic enough to lead a local campaign. Local is the front line- it's where nature is actually saved, far away from the abstract merry-go-round world of higher level rhetoric. It's the trenches were ground is made and lost in the war for nature.  It really is the most important level in nature conservation and the space where everyone can maximise their personal impact in the world. 

Typically within several days of moving in, a public consultation started on a housing development going up outside our window on the reserve. This nightmare literally follows me round. I moved into Beddington Farmlands and a 300,000 tonne incinerator goes up outside my window followed by a societal scale criminal ecocide,  when I moved into Worminghall and started birding the airfield we were chucked off and they built an autonomous car testing site, meanwhile where I moth trapped at Waterstock Mill an application went in to build a massive lorry park (campaigners actually stopped that one- well its gone to appeal anyway) and now this. I don't think it's me, I think this is what it feels like living through an ecological emergency- it's a total war on nature. There's no escape from it and the only place to really fight it is on your doorstep, on your territory.  

So once again I've been going through dodgy ecological consultancy reports (these are some of the primary criminals in the ecological emergency as without these facilitators, the enemy within,  the developers couldn't get anything through), planning applications and good neighbourhood plans (I wrote the ecology section of the Hackbridge one and still have the mental scars to show for it). 

Anyway what it has revealed is that this area that I've been birding recently was proposed or is supposed to be an extension of a wider corridor of Cuttlebrook Local Nature Reserve so at least I can clear up my Ebirding now and have now got a hotspot for this area which makes it easier to collect and visualise data. Ebird data for Cuttlebrook with my recent sightings HERE. I've made a note in the comments which lists are Lower Cuttlebrook and which are the designated LNR. Now I've established that this area is recognised in the local planning system as having some ecological value as it is identified as an area that the LNR can be extended into, the threat of developers building all over it is even more troubling.  

In fact the Great Egret this evening was feeding literally on the spot they want to build on and there has been hundred of Fieldfares and Redwings feeding in the Hawthorns which the ecological consultants identify as low value. Ebird list from today HERE.

Great Egret (above, with Little Egret in middle image) 

Four Chiffchaffs were fly catching over flood water- again literally in the field they want to build on. Apparently when the Ecological Consultants visited here they just 'saw a few Magpies'. I know we can't readily get to the Elites behind the war on nature but we can get to their foot soldiers- the dodgy Ecological Consultants who under-report and undervalue sites. To be fair I've only quickly looked at the Ecology reports but its always the same story- no property developer would be hiring a consultant that is going to put obstacles in their way. I suspect as usual I'll find surveys done at the wrong time of year, at the wrong time of the day, in the wrong type of weather in order to record as few species as possible, whole taxon groups completely ignored or unsampled, poor consultation with any local wildlife groups, mitigation measures which are not only inadequate but won't even be implemented by the developer, BNG calculations at the bottom end of the values and the undervaluing of ruderal, scrub and rough grassland etc etc.  These assassins are arguably worse than the actual builders themselves because builders will build whatever you ask them to- new nature reserves, proper mitigation measures, sustainable housing with wildlife gardens etc. Unfortunately Ecological Consultancy is often very corrupt and these are the people in society who are responsible for Nature Conservation. This is one of the major prongs in the war on nature that needs to be defeated.