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Showing posts from January, 2021

The Criminal Trespass Bill

    Dear all, BREAKING NEWS: thanks to you, MPs will hold a debate in Parliament on 25th January into Government plans to criminalise trespass! Parliament's Petitions Committee has just scheduled the debate, after our petition - ' Don't criminalise trespass ' - got over 134,000 signatures, back in early September. Massive thanks to all of you who signed and promoted the petition! But now we really need your help to contact MPs and get them to say the right things at the debate. We've written a template email, below, which you can adapt and send to your MP. When MPs hear about issues from their constituents, they're so much more likely to take action - and even if they disagree with you, they have to take your views into consideration. You can look up your MP and their email address on the Parliament website here . Remember to include your postcode when you send your email, to show you're a constituent, otherwise they won't have to respond. If you get ...

Walking the M25

In 2001 and 2002 I was asked to perform ecological surveys of Area 5 to support the Highways England’s Biodiversity Action Plan: that is, the M25 and its ‘stubs and tails’ (associated trunk roads or feeder routes).  During 2001 I surveyed 60% of Area 5 including bridges over water for bats (one was filmed for BBC) Inside Out programme). In 2002 I surveyed the remaining 40% The scope of the surveys was to identify bird communities as well as interesting habitats on the network. I also undertook 10 bat surveys of bridges over water, including the rivers Mole, Colne, Darent, Ash, and Wey. The survey focused on Highways Agency (HA) target habitats and species and those considered to be of conservation concern. The HA target habitats were boundary features, grassland, heathland water and woodland. The western side of the M25 – Surrey to Bucks - is a watery landscape, with good quality grassland and from the M3 to the M1 there are some interesting architectural structures The western a...