Planning decisions urged to consider wildlife

Pressure is being placed on housebuilders in the UK to take wildlife concerns into account n order to protect the environment and ensure that natural habitats are not compromised.

It is hoped that better environmental awareness and conservational efforts will help maintain the natural environment while house building projects continue to take place.

On this note, some experts highlight urban environments as having the potential to house a variety of species as long as developers make the necessary provisions to do so in early stages.

One advocate, Mike Wells from the consultancy Biodiversity by Design, highlighted the government's recent Planning Policy Statement 9 as evidence of a shift in attitudes in this direction.

"A planner who interprets it as we would could theoretically reject a development proposal that did no ecological harm whatsoever on the grounds that it did no ecological good," he explained to the BBC.

Recent reports suggest that climate change is affecting the seasonal movement of some UK wildlife, posing another factor that developers may have to take into consideration.

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