Developers Should Be Compelled To Help Biodiversity, But Not Necessarily Where They’re Building | UK News

Landowners in England are preparing to accept payments from developers who may be allowed to compensate for damage to green spaces by funding improvements to wildlife habitats elsewhere.

Charlie Forbes Adam, owner of the 8,000-acre Escrick Park estate near Selby in North Yorkshire, is one of 12 newly titled biodiversity offset providers in a pilot for a bill that would require developers to increase the variety of plants and animals found at each development site by 10%.

The Net Biodiversity Gain (BNG) proposals are part of the environmental bill and state that where biodiversity cannot be enhanced at the development site, it can be created elsewhere, a concept known as compensation.

“I think there are fantastic possibilities,” said Forbes Adam.

“We can provide improved habitats for wildlife of all kinds to compensate for what has been taken away by development.”

He hopes the compensation money from the developers will help him complete a £ 2million program to connect the wildlife habitats of the River Ouse and the River Derwent on his vast estate.

But he acknowledges that reducing green space elsewhere would be controversial.

“At least people who live in new housing estates or occupy new offices will know that somewhere nearby, hopefully, there is some really thriving new wildlife habitat to make up for that,” he said.

Many local planning authorities are already implementing the proposals in the hope that the environmental bill will be passed.

In Hoyland, on the outskirts of Barnsley in West Yorkshire, multi-million pound housing and industrial development on former Greenbelt land will achieve BNG conditions in part by offsetting farmland at six miles away.

Some local activists are …