Wildlife Circus

  Badgers mark their territories by pooing into a scrape in the soil. Sometimes their ‘poos' can be soft and other times quite 'well formed'. The photograph is taken from a series of latrines around a development site in Chessington. Badgers are not mentioned in the ecology reports for the proposed development. Badgers and development do not sit well together. A development can curtail the access a badger has to resources and safe trackways that may have been used for generations. Developments that do not consider Badgers, can push animals into roads, where they can cause accidents.  Over the years, I have written several posts regarding Badgers and development, mainly around Kingston Hill including the Golf Courses coombe-wood-lawn-tennis- . This included two sites owned/developed by Kingston Council, -although the Council were not the applicant for the licence to close the sett - failure to accomodate badger movement, appears to have pushed these animals into subop...

Outline plans for the full redevelopment begain in 2022, with detailed planning applications coming forward for each phase. Completion of the first phase of the regeneration (452 new homes) has been much delayed. Some newly planted trees and the distinctive Piper road Cherry tree are dead or dying and sewage surcharges from manholes have ended up disappearing down two of the storm drains (to the Hogsmill river a mere 200m away).                                                One of the more 'friendly' videos of the sewage surcharges                                            If we want to see some improvements in these poor standards, it is important to comment on the above application. In the second phase of the development, a detailed planning application for...

 GLA Assembly member former chair Dear Andrew, You may remember we corresponded & subsequently met with you in 2021, re: local environmental degradation, including green space provision in the plans for the  regeneration of the Cambridge Road Estate, loss of footpaths etc. in advance of the planning application. One of the issues was increasing the population in an Area of Deficiency of access to open space. The attached map of AoD, was drawn by Greenspace Information for Greater London and the purple is the Area of Deficiency.  Kingston Council had an Independent Assessment of Open Space provision in Norbiton Ward stating that it was below the qualitative standard of 1.11ha of public parkland per 1,000 population (Atkins). This was before the population was to rise considerably when  the number of residences > double. Knowing this, the developers consultants, Barton Wilmore, stated that Kingston Cemetery was to be the new Open Space, and was in fact a Park. F...

  I took these photos in August during the 'Covid Years', before reports of developing this 50 acre site hit the headlines. It seemed unlikely that a development on such a scale could go ahead, without access from KT9 1DW, as it would be unrealistic to use the existing narrow access roads. At the time, I had discussions with the Tree Officer, about the different levels created when the lorryloads of spoil/hoggin were brought to the site (planning application 13/10228/FUL & subsequent CEMP 14/10126 requiring the creation of habitat, including woodland). It would be interesting to know how much of the latter - 'here today, gone tomorrow mitigation'- will remain in the new scheme. The oak trees on site are magnificient and a natural asset to the borough. But we know that the developers have said that this site is 'compromised', 'serving no green belt purpose due to its proximity to the A3', and as the focus of many anti-social behavioural issues, should...

Yet another major application in the Greenbelt from Chessington World of Adventures see 24/03150 is under consideration. 'Demolition and removal of rides, buildings and structures. One existing ride to be retained and rethemed and repositioned. Erection of new buildings and structures to provide a new themed land including a part indoor and outdoor rollercoaster, indoor children's ride, themed play areas along with associated buildings for various purposes, structures, landscaping, infrastructure above and below ground and other works'.                                                                             Tree grave...

Myth-busting bats, newts and the economy vs nature protections Tuesday 28 January 2025 Joe Keegan There has been widespread misinformation blaming nature as a blocker to growth in the run up to the Chancellor’s speech this week, writes Joe Keegan, public affairs officer at The Wildlife Trusts. In 2021 Rachel Reeves announced her ambition to become ‘Britain’s first green chancellor’ – however, recent announcements on planning and airport expansion put this aspiration in jeopardy. The irony of Rachel Reeves's crusade for growth is that these policies risk undermining the UK’s natural capital – an essential foundation for growth.     Nature is not a blocker to growth  Nature does not block growth – it is the very foundation on which growth is built.  Research by PwC  found that 47% of the companies on the London Stock Exchange are highly or moderately dependent on nature....

  Last night, I attended a meeting to determine key issues in an update of a certain Climate Strategy 2030. In my break-out group, there seemed to be little consensus about drainage issues related to use of plastic turf and sealed surfaces in gardens.  Any updated strategy,  is written in the context of  an 'emergency', which this particular borough declared in 2019. As I look around my own borough, I see a number of recently missed opportunities, including the one pictured above.  It is one of a pair beds, each end of an LTN. The opposing bed does indeed have SuDs capability. You can read more about above and below ground infiltration here, which was a commentary on the Cambridge Road Estate urban-drainage-systems . So why is the larger one, non-SuDs? Why have several trees around the school boundary in the same road - been felled - inevitably affecting the local hydrology? I begin to wonder if the SuDs was created as an offset for this tree loss. So there is...

    All photos Phil Renton   Richard Jefferies lived in Tolworth for five years, from 1877-1882, at 296 Ewell Road, then known as No. 2 Woodside, where there is now a blue plaque to remember him by. During this time he wrote some of his most important essays, collected in the book Nature Near London (see how he has been celebrated locally here tolworth-treasure ) Andrew Rossabi, President of the Richard Jefferies Society (pictured in the hat above) gave a talk about the writer's time in the area to a captivated audience at Surbiton Library in September 2018. The talk was followed by a short walk to the Richard Jefferies Bird Sanctuary, where an elm tree was planted in memory of this important and much-loved Victorian naturalist and author.    This is what it looked like 18.5.2019 and it did very well until .... 11.1.2022 when it was found vandalized; effectively coppiced With some aftercare including bramble clearance, it began to regenerate and today loo...

  Dear Kier, One of your manifesto pledges is to get the economy on track and simplify / speed up the planning system etc etc.This was also one of the last governments pledges. However, in this quest they (DEFRA) inexplicably introduced perhaps one of the most convoluted, complex schemes known to mankind. It goes by the name of Biodiversity Net Gain. A recent audit by ONS concluded that the scheme is highly ineffective and fraught with issues and underfunding / misapplication / total lack of investment. I have worked in the ecological sector for approaching 30 years. I can tell you from painful experience that this scheme is the single most cause of planning delays, creating a complete log jam of applications. More to the point it is a huge waste of resources, time, money and effort which results in more than 50% (often much higher) of total expenditure wasted on the processors and transactors of the scheme. Like nearly every credit based system, e.g. carbon offsetting, it is a ...