In his Autumn Statement last week, the Chancellor George Osborne set out his views on how to improve the economy and tackle the debt crisis. Amongst other matters, he included a few comments in relation to UK environmental legislation that have not gone down well with conservation bodies such as the RSPB and Wildlife Trusts.

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This newsflash has just been received from Natural England announcing the withdrawal of its reptile mitigation guidelines.

Consultants and interested parties are being encouraged to provide contributions to the re-drafting process, but the contact details do not appear to be on the NE web site but can be found on the IEEM web site. Please feel free to add a comment below.

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Natural England has launched new guidelines on survey and site mitigation for reptiles, producing a single set of standards for good practice in reptile ecology work. It is aimed at developers, local authorities and consultants.

All species of reptile are now on the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) priority list, so their conservation has to be taken into account during the planning process, whenever a site supports populations of grass snake, slow worm, common lizard or other reptiles.

Our consultant ecologist Kelly Clark writes;

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Natural England has released new mitigation guidelines for reptiles. The pdf is available for download here TIN102.

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Updated guidance on bird surveys for proposed wind farm sites in England has been long awaited, currently ecologists are using methods set out by Scottish Natural Heritage which often do not suit English conditions. This new guidance however presents us with a new set of problems without providing much in the way of a route map for ecologists, developers or planners. more

This week Natural England released guidance to developers and ecologists describing the survey methods and effort which will be recommended when considering the potential impacts of wind farms on bird populations. Baker Consultants' team of ornithologists has put together a response to this document. If you would like to get involved in the discussion, please feel free to post a comment here or read the full document. more

Natural England Technical Information Note TIN069 - Assessing the effects of onshore wind farms on birds. What will this mean for developers? more

There is a need for the industry to work closely with Natural England to make sure that their systems are fit for purpose, can be easily implemented and achieve the aims of the legislation – which is to protect those rare and vulnerable species, the law may be complex but it does not mean that the systems which implement the law should add more complexity. more