The recently published Planning Inspectors’ final report on the Area Action Plan for Salt Cross had some encouraging news for biodiversity north of the A40. The Inspectors confirmed that the “requirement for an overall 25% net gain in biodiversity” was “justified”, even though it exceeded the minimum 10% target introduced by the Environment Act 2021. (Why they couldn’t apply the same positive flexibility to achieve net zero carbon development is a mystery.)
However, beneath these encouraging words lurk a couple of dangers, one unquantifiable, and the other insidious.
The first danger refers to the fact that we still don’t really know if measures taken to achieve biodiversity net gain in and around large developments actually work. Let’s hope they do.
The second danger refers to what happens in the interval between a proposal for major development and its construction and completion.
The other day, walking back towards Lower Road from Eynsham Mill, we looked up at the rising land to the west and asked, “Why are those fields a sickly yellow colour?” Everything else is greening up and springing back to life, but the L-shaped fields that used to belong to Corpus Christi College are looking increasingly lifeless.
These fields are now part of the Eynsham Land Pool Trust, the corporate body that owns most of the area that will become Salt Cross. They were previously managed organically by a tenant farmer for both crops and wildlife, and the biodiversity in and around them was rich and getting richer. The Trust recently entrusted the L-shaped fields to a new land management regime. Now they look dead. You can clearly see where the herbicide begins and ends in the accompanying photograph.
They may recover in time, if allowed to, but the repeated application of strong herbicide – apparently in preparation for ploughing, which is yet to happen – is a powerful symbol of humanity’s disconnect from the rest of nature and why we need to return more of our land to nature-friendly farming. The gardening writer Anni Kelsey has pointed out how human-centred, top-down impositions on the living world, for so long unquestioned, “cause much harm to the earth and all living things”. The country writer Ronald Blythe wrote from his home in Suffolk, “I have always been conscious of residents other than humanity who give this address and whose claim for shelter is historic.”
In the context of the Area Action Plan, these fields now have a biodiversity level close to zero. If this turns out to be the base line for calculating a 25% increase in biodiversity net gain, it will be easy to achieve, but will result in a considerable net decrease. We can only hope that the base line will refer back to earlier evidence.
It doesn’t help to lash out at individual people in these circumstances, but it’s frustrating trying, and struggling, to manage one’s anger at what appears to be a thoughtless degrading of habitat and wildlife. The Greek philosopher Aristotle said: “Anybody can become angry – that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”