Wildlife Circus

  Thames Water have 56 days to pay £4,000,000 + £84, 646 costs for the sewage spill that took place at the Green Lane Recreation Ground during 2016, as announced by the Judge at Aylesbury Crown Court this afternoon. see here Hogsmill sewage leak Although Thames Water pleaded guilty to this offence in 2019, it has taken - 2 years - to appear in the court lists. In addition, Thames Water asked for 4 TIC's (offences to be taken into consideration). See these incidents below and links to the blog posts: 8th February 2016 - pertains to the pollution of Green Lane Recreation Ground; 27th January 2018 - spillage of stored sewage sludge 14-16th October 2018 Sewage-spill-green-lane-recreation.html and linked incident 24.10.18 25th September 2019 G r een-lane-sewage-spill 30 personnel were required to remove 2,500 bags of waste from the Green Lane recreation ground, New Malden; the public amenity remained closed for almost one month (photo above) after the Tunnel Sewer (Worcester Park-Gre...

I have written several posts looking at the outcomes for biodiversity, particularly at infill and infrastructure developments in Kingston. These include: Tolworth Girls School & Tala Close Harlow Gardens, Lower Marsh Lane   N ew-malden-pipe-track S ixty-acre-wood-Chessington Gasholder site   In addition, comments have been sent to councillors, planners etc. regarding general loss of biodiversity at these and sites.    Perhaps it's time to draw a number of conclusions so that we do not make the same mistakes at Cambridge road estate and linked sites: Kingsmeadow and Cumberland house For this investigation,  ecological surveys were obtained for the schemes (usually by FOI requests). The surveys attested to the protection of certain habitats and species in law and policy ; and a requirement for the Mitigation Hierachy to be applied ; along with Net Gain for biodiversity as per the National Planning Policy Framework. The final Ecological Recommendations h...

Yesterday was Internation Dawn Chorus day and I left the house at 4.40am to listen to the birds in the local cemetery. Starting almost exclusively with blackbirds (8), robins (19) followed by wrens (17) and  the odd woodpigeon (5).  Territory numbers are in brackets. Most of the territories were associated with the boundary features, especially along the Hogsmill river, where most of the wrens were located. The upper cemetery is always better for birds than the lower portion, although there are house sparrows near the Dawson Road Gate. Of the larger birds: jackdaws passed to- and- fro constantly, with crows largely being sedentary, three nests apparent from up-sticking tails. Two magpies did not appear to be breeding. No raptors were seen this year although buzzards are frequently seen overhead later in the day. Daisies were tightly shut. A watery dunnock song lisped from two sites with a third heard from the compost heap later in the day. Numbers of song thrush were down ...