The government's new law requiring developers to deliver a 10% biodiversity net gain on their developments has been greeted with approval by those concerned about pollution, habitat loss and sustainable development.
The idea is that any given site will provide a habitat for a more diverse range of plant and animal species after completion of the project than it did before work began. As we report on page 7 of this issue, some house-builders have been aiming to deliver a biodiversity net gain for some time. A wildflower meadow, pond or wetland often does the trick with the added benefit of offering a more attractive outdoor environment for prospective house-buyers.
How this 10% net gain is measured is questionable. Biodiversity, by definition, encompasses an almost infinite number of organisms, capable of an almost infinite number of combinations in God knows how many potential habitats. And yet you can apparently measure this all in biodiversity units. You can, that is, if you have enough ecologists to do the sums – and apparently we currently do not.
And on that note, we report in this issue on not one but two major scaffolding contracts that have had to take special precautions to safeguard vulnerable habitats. In both cases they involve birds: kittiwakes on the Tyne Bridge and peregrine falcons on Worcester Cathedral. Demand for 'construction ecologists' is clearly on the rise.