Wildlife Circus

The Hedgerow Regs. are complicated. To qualify a hedge must be >30 years old, be longer than 20m, abutt another hedge and surround open land. The Regs. could  offer greater protection for a habitat and maintain ecological function for a group of veteran oak trees than say, a TPO order. They are in essence, very different: - the latter is an amenity designation; and the other serves to protect a habitat. A dynamic system such as a hedgerow, constantly regenerating itself, can be many hundreds of years old and a good place to start to identify them, is on old maps. This is a section from an old map of the area from 1842, the red line indicates the same oaks that can be seen in the photo above (taken in 2021). The vegetation was managed grading the habitat from the veteran oak trees down to the scrub layer and was an aesthetically beautiful natural asset in our suburbs.  As far as I am aware, the council began investigating the status of the oaks ~ decade ago when a developer ...

  Application 22/3139/FUL During  April this year, we visited the expo at the Thames Young Mariners who were expounding their vision for expansion..... We fed back our views and now we are trying to match this to a planning application that has just been submitted. Demolition of existing buildings and construction of replacement buildings with associated residential accommodation, changing block, replacement staff accommodation and outdoor activity equipment including high ropes, climbing wall, coasteering course, supporting pontoons with associated hard and soft landscaping and parking. History For eighteen years, I was the volunteer wildlife ranger on Ham Lands, which crossed over into the Mariners site. Back in the day, it was considered a 'reservoir' for wildlife, especially for slow worms & badgers as well as a nesting site for kingfishers and a large stand of bee orchids. I used to monitor - amongst other things - the birds and butterflies - and a file was kept in th...