Wildlife Circus

The 240 acre Queen Elizabeth Park is open and we were told by consultants working for the Legacy Delivery Authority that since 2012, 700 wildlife 'units' have been installed and 4,000 trees planted (additional to those there already). These include bird and bat boxes, kingfisher boxes and two otter holts. Whilst the Park was created over an already unique and largely unacknowledged site for wildlife, it is worth highlighting some of the new features and good practice designs, which could be used elsewhere. Interpretation of wise water harvesting  Prior to the development, a  Biodiversity Action Plan was written for the area  and the River Lea was evaluated as London's second river and put at the centre of everything (read more here  River_Lea .) Efforts were made to clean-up the environment and reinstate the banks as natural using similar techniques and materials to those employed along the Hogsmill and Crane rivers. The banks were pulled bank and ...

So the Kingston Society are supporting the  planning application for King George's Gate (the Tesco's site at Tolworth) which has now been submitted (15/10074) even though it falls very short of the requirements of the borough's Local Development Framework (LDF), not least due to the low number of affordable units (90 out of 705). Tesco planning app But the whole ecological assessment is based on a false premise i.e that the nearest statutory designated sites for nature conservation importance are 800 metres away, when in fact they are less than 200 metres. This is not the fault of the consultants acting for Tesco, who have in good faith, obtained information on locally protected sites from the London Biological Records Centre (Greenspace Information for Greater London GiGL). However when Tolworth Court Farm Fields and The Tolworth Moated Manor sites were notified as LNR's (the latter approved in 2008  Moated Manor Council Decision  the council didn't bother...

checking the bat box from the ground Kent design bat box showing fur staining  After a training session for prospective bat roost visitors at Richmond Park, 28.3.15, members of the London Bat Group went to the Roebuck Inn to toast the launch of the London Bat Atlas. It was initiated during 2010 with seed funding from the Vodafone ‘World of a Difference’ fund, which helped employ the services of Richard Law, to gather together the existing data holdings, as well as investigate the type of document and layout we wanted. It took longer to accomplish than we originally thought, but with the help of Greenspace information for Greater London, our group has produced a document, which is as accurate as possible, but easy to access the information. It is an example of the importance of submitting biological records, especially in this time of ‘blink and you miss it’ demolition and re-development. As always it exemplifies those boroughs where there are active bat group membe...