Countryside Management Association News

Britain's royal organisation dealing with high quality planning has given its annual award to the regeneration of 150 acres of former coalmine and slagheap, once regarded as a national totem of despair.
An industrial provident society in Nottinghamshire, which has carried out traditional northern doorstep-cleaning on a massive scale, has won the Silver Jubilee Cup, the Royal Town Planning Institute's highest award
"We used to say 'where there's muck there's brass' but we'd had enough muck when mining came to an end," says Stan Crawford, the former president of the National Union of Mineworkers in Nottinghamshire, who heads the group's remarkable creation, Sherwood Energy Village.
Looking out over wind turbines, ponds and modern offices angled to trap sunlight, he can now count 600 jobs on the site, as many as when Ollerton colliery finally closed in 1995.
"We knew two other things back then: that we wanted a diverse economy, after years of the pit for the men and the clothes factory for the women, and we didn't want anyone else imposing our future on us," says Crawford.
The society, democratically run on traditional co-op lines, negotiated with British Coal for two years before buying the site on a 100% mortgage of £50,000.
The deal circumvented British Coal's arrangements for most of its other abandoned pitheads, which were either taken over by the government regeneration quango, English Partnerships, or sold to private developers. Determination and a canniness, which saw the group reject one BC offer of sale for just £1 plus a huge slice of any future profits helped them through.
Geological nous from the many mining veterans involved in the scheme was also immediately useful, first in shifting thousands of tonnes of polluted soil, and then in creating Britain's largest sustainable urban drainage system.
Circular dykes carry heavy rainfall long enough for the water to drain into the sandy aquifer below without any run-off into the river Trent and other local rivers.
"It's designed to cope with the sort of flooding we might get every 200 years," says Crawford, "and last summer, we got very near that. But everything coped."
Rainwater is also harvested by many of the offices on site, which include the national headquarters of the holiday firm Center Parcs and a convalescent unit for brain surgery patients.
"We maintain the drainage, rather than Severn Trent, and the rain harvesting for flushing lavatories and the like means a big reduction in water rates," says Crawford. On the society's own headquarters, the E-Building which houses a bistro and has a children's nursery next door, the savings reached £4,000 last year.
Office tenants such as Karen White, an accountant who has relocated her business to the energy village, have to sign leases, which require systems such as heat exchange using ground extraction and a ban on power-hungry air conditioning.
"I'm not complaining because it's going to reduce my energy bills," she says. "It's certainly warm enough in here, and we're glad to take part in other village ideas, like the car share scheme."
The latest phase of the regeneration is house building, with 196 properties planned on the same entirely commercial and unsubsidised basis as the office and industrial units. Unlike them, though, the houses are being sold freehold, from £94,000 for a one-bedroom home to a minimum £200,000 for a four-bedroom one.
"We didn't think leasehold would appeal to housebuyers, but we've kept control over the sustainable standards by being our own developer where the homes are concerned," says Crawford, whose CV includes a useful spell as past Labour leader of the local Newark and Sherwood district council.
The planting of two former slagheaps has matured to give the new houses a pleasant view, with mixed young trees merging neatly into a large copse of ancient woodland, which survived the coming of coal.
The wider setting of gentle hills, close to the Dukeries area of mansions and estates, whose owners initially exploited the coal, is attracting professionals, including hi-tech tenants, to the energy village.
Ollerton still has the close feel of a pit community, but the provident society is happy to broaden the social range at the same time as diversifying the local economy.
The latest and biggest coup is the arrival this summer of 200 Nottinghamshire county council jobs, relocated from Newark, attracting considerable controversy. That perhaps says more than anything about the journey travelled by Ollerton since the despairing days of the broken strike: it is now successful enough to be criticised in the wider community of north Nottinghamshire for attracting too many jobs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/12/energyefficiency.energy

An insect that once held promise as a natural pest controller was branded the most invasive species in Britain yesterday by researchers.

The harlequin ladybird has taken just four years to spread across England and to make inroads into Scotland and Wales, a feat that took the grey squirrel a century to achieve.

Since 2005 more than 20,000 sightings have been recorded of the ladybird, which threatens to take over from many of the 46 native British species of ladybird.

Its progress has been tracked by the Harlequin Ladybird Survey, an online survey overseen by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Thousands of members of the public took part and it was funded in part by the Government.

Peter Brown, of the centre, said: It's the most invasive species in Britain. It is perhaps equalled by the horse chestnut leaf-miner but nothing else comes close.

Harlequin ladybirds, Harmonia axyridis, were first identified in Britain in 2004 when one was seen in a pub garden in Sible Hedingham, Essex. Last month the species was reported in Orkney.

So serious is the problem that the ladybird is the subject of a special issue of the journal BioControl. More than 50 scientists from Europe and North America contributed to the journal to share knowledge about its impact.

The horse chestnut leaf-miner is an insect first seen in southwest London in 2002. It has spread rapidly and now infests about 20 per cent of horse chestnut trees, causing leaf loss.

Helen Roy, who works at the centre and who edited the journal, said: Through this online survey we have been able to track its movements and are now beginning to understand more complex aspects of the ecology of the harlequin ladybird.

Because it eats so many aphids, its staple diet, as well as other ladybirds, it has threatened the number of native ladybirds and species, such as lacewings, which also eat aphids. It also threatens aphid numbers. The two-spot and seven-spot ladybirds are particularly threatened.

The harlequin ladybird's voracious appetite for aphids attracted interest in its use as a biological pest control but after it was released in several European countries in the 1980s and 1990s it rapidly became established and spread widely.

Mr Brown said: Ladybirds are very popular but this one is a great concern in terms of his risk to biodiversity.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3321480.ece

It has taken more than a decade of conflict, consultation and compromise, but the UK's first community marine conservation area has been given the go-ahead.

This week, environmental campaigners from the Isle of Arran and representatives of the Clyde fishing fleet will sit down to discuss exactly how the area in Lamlash Bay will work, after the Scottish government approved the idea.

It was the islanders who first raised concerns about the decline in fish and other marine life in the bay. Arran was once renowned for its fishing, with hundreds of sea anglers flocking to the island for its annual fish festival. That was decades ago when cod, haddock, hake, dab, plaice and turbot were plentiful in the waters of the Firth of Clyde.

Today the Clyde fishing fleet is a fraction of its original size, and the white fish have gone, leaving only prawns, langoustines and a dwindling stock of scallops. Islanders said the bed of the bay had been left barren after being dragged clean by dredgers a claim refuted by the fishermen.

Howard Wood, a local resident and recreational diver, was used to swimming through shoals of fish or small scallops, known as queenies. When his son started diving in 2003, it was six months before he saw a fish. Along with other residents, Wood set up the Community of Arran Seabed Trust (Coast), and started campaigning for change.

Under the proposals, the result of a unique collaborative effort between the commercial fishermen and the islanders, 267 hectares of the bay will now be designated as a no-take zone, where fishing is banned, with a further 660 hectares set aside as a fisheries management area, subject to scientific regulation.

The plans, given the nod by ministers last week, will now go out to consultation before final approval from Holyrood.

"We are obviously very pleased," said Howard Wood. "It has taken a very long time. We do realise we still have a few months of official consultation to go through, but it's moving in the right direction and it is what we have wanted. Something had to be done. Our proposal is not going to solve the Clyde's problems, but it's a start."

The Lamlash project will be the first time that statutory protection has been given to a marine area as a result of proposals being developed at grassroots level. The UK's first no-take zone was set up in 2003 at Lundy Island off the North Devon coast, after pressure by English Nature and the Devon Sea Fisheries Committee. Within 18 months, conservationists were reporting that sea life was recovering, with three times as many lobsters in the no-take area compared to areas where fishing was allowed.

Similar results have been achieved in other parts of the world, with anecdotal evidence of stocks improving outside the no-take zones as well.

"It will be a slow process," said Howard Wood. "We're hopeful that it will be not just scallops that will be affected. If you give the sea a bit of a rest, all your soft coral, your bryozoans will slowly generate on the seabed. You won't get the sea bed raked back and forward six times a year and become like a gravel path. You will end up with this intricate seabed."

The Arran initiative will be watched closely by ministers at Holyrood and Westminster, with marine bills being considered on both sides of the border. Other coastal communities will also be taking note, although this is something that concerns the fishing community.

Patrick Stewart, of the Clyde Fisherman's Association, said it had been important "to show that the fishing industry can work with environmental interests".

"In the fishing industry there is considerable antagonism towards environmentalists, NGOs & and the general environmental lobby that's neither supportable nor appropriate, with the marine bills coming up and just the general changed view of the public," he said.

"We thought we would use this to see if it is possible in a microscopic scale to see whether we could achieve a cooperative venture - and it looks as though it will happen."

Richard Lochhead, Scottish rural affairs and environment secretary, said the initiative was a fantastic example of what can be achieved by working together.

"The proposals strike a balance between fishing and marine conservation. We will see fisheries management in one part of the bay, the safeguarding of the natural marine environment in the other and a boost in tourism for the whole of Arran."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/07/conservation.water

The National Botanic Garden of Wales is to receive up to £1.9m extra public money to pay off its debt.
Deputy First Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones said it was a one-off grant to put the £43m garden on a sound financial footing to attract private investment.

The money it receives each year from the assembly government will rise from £150,000 to up to £550,000.

Managers of the garden at Llanarthne in Carmarthenshire welcomed it as a "monumental milestone".

Two months ago, it emerged that garden managers were in talks with the assembly government to remove the debt and increase its annual grant.

Revealing the outcome of those talks, Mr Jones told AMs that the garden had met all the recovery targets it had been set.

Carmarthenshire County Council also announced that it would convert an existing £1.35m loan into a grant and provide a further package of financial support to the garden, with funding matched by the assembly government

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7230639.stm

Nature is so confused by the mild winter conditions that many species of animal and plant are convinced that spring has arrived.

Birds have started nesting, bumblebees are finding a supply of snowdrops and daffodils, and tadpoles have been spotted in ponds.

The cold snap last week curbed enthusiasm briefly, but Britain's wildlife has now resumed the dash towards the serious business of finding food and starting a family.

Volunteers for the Woodland Trust have reported hundreds of sightings of animals and plants that are behaving as if spring were here. The early start for many species is in line with the trend over the past decade and is attributed to the effects of global warming.

Observations reported to the Nature's Calendar survey, run by the trust, include hazel catkins appearing as early as December 9, snowdrops in flower on December 10 and 47 sightings of seven-spotted ladybirds last month.

Butterflies making unseasonable appearances include a red admiral on January 6, four months before it would be expected, and a peacock butterfly on December 31, two-and-a-half months early.

Collared doves and rooks are among the birds most confused by the mild weather, which has tempted scores of pairs to start nesting. Robins and bluetits have also been caught out.

Spring behaviour tends to be seen first in southern Britain, but the effects are just as much in evidence in the North, with catkins out in Lancashire and snowdrops in Yorkshire in the middle of last month.

"There are a lot of early sightings, such as active ladybirds and butterflies out and about, Kate Lewthwaite, of the Woodland Trust, said.

"The natural world is giving us clear year-on-year indications that things are changing. The timing of natural events is one of the most responsive aspects of the natural world to warming.

She was most surprised by sightings of tadpoles in Devon and London, but frogspawn have been seen as early as December, and newts were seen last month.

Reports from the survey will be analysed to assess how much earlier this year's spring events are compared with the average. It is thought unlikely that this year will match last year, when the mildest spring on record meant that the season started 23 days earlier than average.

Temperatures for last month were 5.3C (9.5F), cooler than the 6C of last year, but well above the long-term average of 3.4C and the eighth-warmest on record.

Britain's climate is expected to become warmer and wetter during winter, encouraging many species to emerge early, but cold snaps, which can be devastating for early starters, are still going to be a feature. Frogs breed only once a year, so if frogspawn were killed by the cold, a generation would be lost. Similarly, butterflies that appear too early usually die if frosts return.

Woods and forests are likely to change if the trend for warmer winters continues. Oaks would be expected to thrive because they can exploit the milder weather by sprouting buds earlier, whereas ashes struggle to keep up.

Dr Lewthwaite said that while some people judge the arrival of spring by the equinox, and others by the calendar, many will decide it has started when they see a favourite plant or animal. For many birdwatchers it is likely to be the arrival of migrant birds, particularly the chiffchaff. Traditionalists will stick to the first cuckoo.

For Dr Lewthwaite it was the sight of snowdrops in the Midlands. It's sunny and the snowdrops are out. Spring has sprung for me.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3307706.ece

The moors of north Lewis are desolate in midwinter, a treeless expanse of ochre grasses and rich black peat, pummelled by Arctic winds driving in from the north Atlantic.

That moor is now at the centre of an increasingly bitter battle between local opponents and two powerful corporations, Amec and British Energy, who are fighting to save controversial plans to build one of the world's largest wind farms - a vast arc of 181 turbines curving down the northern half of the Hebridean island.

If it were dropped onto London it would stretch from the Olympics park in Stratford to Epsom in the south and Hampton court in the west. Each turbine is 140m high, dwarfing all other man-made things on the island.

Eight days ago, to the jubilation of its critics and environmentalists, it emerged that the Scottish executive was "minded to refuse" the £500m scheme as it would seriously damage the moor's extremely fragile, internationally-protected habitats for rare birds such as dunlin, golden eagles, merlin, golden plover and red-throated divers. The moor itself is one of the most ecologically-significant peat bogs in Europe.

Scottish ministers have since come under intense pressure to reverse that provisional decision before making a final announcement this month. Councillors, crofters' leaders and the developers are vigorously lobbying ministers and the European commission to save the north Lewis scheme, or at least find a compromise. Today the local Scottish National party MSP, Alasdair Allan, will face those bitterly-disappointed people at a meeting on Lewis.

The 600mw project, they insist, could supply a tenth of Scotland's renewable electricity, significantly boosting the UK's efforts to cut our increasing CO2 emissions, and energise the Western Isles' faltering economy.

But for Catriona Campbell, 50, a primary school teacher in the village of Bragar, the wind farm would be a disaster. "We've been brought up to respect and love the moor ever since we were tiny," she said. "It's a piece of ground which means so much to us. It's just part of us ... I knew right away that I didn't want the moor to be dug up or concreted over in any way. That would just break my heart. I don't see how it will be anything other than a completely devastated area."

Even the £2,000 a year in rent which each crofter stands to earn from the wind farm has failed to persuade Dina Murray, a crofter and vociferous opponent. The moor, she said, is pitted by unmarked archaeological treasures vital to the community's heritage - old grazing huts called shielings and uncounted prehistoric sites, which the council and developers have ignored. "Do they really think they can buy our agreement to this wind farm?" she said. "Do they genuinely believe that the crofters will capitulate if a big enough financial sweetie is dangled in front of them? If so, we have news for them: we are not for sale, not at any price."

Only 77 people wrote to the executive in support, while 13,000, three quarters of them islanders, have opposed it, they said. Regular surveys of crofters and tourists find often overwhelming opposition to the scheme, Campbell added. It is said the Labour member of the Scottish parliament, a prominent local journalist called Alastair Morrison, lost his seat last May to the SNP because he backed the scheme.

The Western Isles council, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, is adamant that the project is vital to the island's economy - a view shared by the Stornoway Trust, a community-run body which owns much of the moorland earmarked for the development. One recent study showed that the Western Isles has a trade deficit of £163m a year. Its economy is officially designated as "fragile", kept afloat by state subsidies.

Although unemployment has fallen sharply, its population is projected to fall by more than 5% - chiefly because it will see the largest migration of any area in Scotland over the next 25 years, with roughly one islander in six expected to leave to work elsewhere. Birth rates too are expected to fall dramatically.

Supporters of the wind farm say many skilled islanders - particularly engineers - have been forced to leave to find work, moving to the mainland, to the North Sea oil rigs, the Middle East and the United States.

They believe men like Lionel McIver, 23, who works in Inverness for the wave energy firm Wavegen, with his aeronautical engineering degree, would flock home if Lewis became a centre for renewable energy. "If the job was right, I would work on Lewis. But with my degree, unfortunately the opportunities just aren't there," he said.

Iain MacIver, the Stornoway trust's estate manager, believes that rejecting the wind farm would be an economic disaster, seriously harming the council's long-standing ambition to make the Western Isles a hub for renewable energy, first mooted in the late 1990s. "We started this race before anybody else. We've been overtaken and now it looks like we're going to be lapped," he said.

The original plan was to install 1,000MW of wind turbines on Lewis. There are three other schemes - ranging from a 13.8MW project to a much larger 53-turbine, 160MW scheme - currently in the planning system, all being opposed by campaigners.

The island stands to earn up to £6m a year in benefits from the wind farm, with the crofters earning £2m a year for 20 years. That money, three times more than their agricultural subsidies, could renovate village halls and schools, and invest in local renewable energy programmes. The wind farm, however, would only directly affect 2% of the legally-protected moor. Other senior figures on the islands agree. Neil MacLeod, a prominent crofter in the village of Tong, said it would be an "absolute tragedy" to lose the wind farm. "What we need are jobs and a stable economy, and we had that promise with the wind farm."

But for MSP Alasdair Allan, this scheme was simply too big, too brutal for Lewis. Its economy should be rebuilt with a mix of initiatives and industries, backed by deep cuts in ferry fares.

"There is no one magic bullet which will solve the island's problems," he said. "I think it's a big mistake to believe that it will. We can't progress on the basis of one enormous industrial wind farm, particularly if it doesn't enjoy community support."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/04/windpower.renewableenergy

Half the uncropped land in the country has been ploughed up this year, in what conservationists have warned could be one of the worst disasters for wildlife for 40 years.

Stone-curlew threat from farm land set-aside
Scrapping set-aside 'threatens farmland birds'
The skylark, stone curlew, English partridge and brown hare were predicted by conservationists to suffer further declines as a result of the ploughing up of land as the result of higher prices for wheat and the demand for biofuels.

Conservationists said that the extent of the changes, identified in a survey for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, came as an "unwelcome shock."

The survey showed that this growing season there has been an 85 per cent decline in stubbles left out of production for one year and a 30 per cent decline in non-rotational set-aside, as farmers respond to demand and the EU minister's decision to set the mandatory level of set aside at zero last autumn.

In an indication that the scale of the changes had taken the Government by surprise, Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, said that the figures published by Defra's Farm Business survey would provide "a firm basis for informing any future action."

Mr Benn was asked last summer by Natural England, the Government's conservation advisers, to introduce a mandatory green farming scheme to compensate for the loss of tracts of habitat as a result of the ploughing up of set-aside, introduced as a measure to control EU grain mountains.

www.telegraph.co.uk