Saving wildlife through the local plan
Meet Stan, a local nature champion who saved an area of countryside rich in wildlife.
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Hertsmere in Hertfordshire – home to a rich range of wildlife, including 13 species nationally recognised for their declining populations. At the time, one of the last breeding Tree Sparrow colonies in the south-east of England was also found here.
The Council were required to build 12,600 houses, along with their supporting infrastructure, by 2035. 15 sites were earmarked in the first draft of the local plan, but Stan, the Group Leader of the SE Hertfordshire RSPB Local Group, knew that some provided invaluable habitat to important species.
"We started working on our objections in December 2018 when the first version of the local plan was released. The process was somewhat hampered by the pandemic but also because Hertsmere Council kept adding new sites into the local plan.”
Pooling the knowledge
Stan objected to the draft plan and enlisted expert help into his campaign from the RSPB (who provided some helpful guidance), Herts Bird Club’s Chairman and Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust’s (HMWT) Conservation Officer. All parties joined together in a working group to share resources.
"HMWT contacted the Council’s ecologist to work together to ensure that our arguments were heard. We also identified all the impacted wildlife sites although many were Local Wildlife Sites so had no [legal] protection.”
After seeking advice from other campaigners around the country who were also protecting Tree Sparrows, the group began to ramp up support. Stan wrote to other local wildlife groups in the county (including other RSPB Local Groups) to ask their members to object to the next stage of the draft local plan.
Gathering momentum
Then, it was time to raise the profile of the campaign. Through contacting the local press and building social media pages, Stan’s group secured a front page spread on a local newspaper, over 800 supporters on Facebook and helped promote a petition which reached over 2,000 signatures.
"When the second version of the local plan came out in October 2021, it still lacked any real plan for helping to save the Tree Sparrows. Our working group compiled a four-page very detailed letter raising the concerns that we had and proposing that the site be split into two. One for building less houses and the other where most of the Tree Sparrows and other important wildlife was located. The latter we proposed be a nature reserve.”
Due to the support of the campaign, the revised draft plan received so many objections that the public consultation period had to be extended by two weeks.
A win for nature
Finally, in late January 2024, the Council shelved the Plan entirely. They were overwhelmed by the record number of objections received, with over 20,000 raising concerns about the proposed loss of countryside.
