The wildlife organisations<\/a> say the moves go against \u201call good scientific evidence\u201d and create a \u201cperfect storm\u201d threatening ancient woodland and wildlife including badgers, dormice and sand lizards.<\/p>\nCraig Bennett, of the Wildlife Trusts, said the bill also removed local decision-making.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cIf in about one or two years\u2019 time, local communities start seeing bulldozers moving in on some of their most treasured green spaces, where they walk their dogs, and the first they have been aware of some of the threat is when they see that, I think people will get very frustrated with the government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wildlife on a site covered by a new environmental delivery plan will have to be removed, said Sally Hayns, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management.<\/p>\n
\u201cEither they’ve got to be found, caught and removed, which probably won\u2019t happen, or they have to be killed,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI can’t see the public supporting developers literally sanitising sites to make use of this new approach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Controversially, the legislation allows developers to tick their environmental obligation box simply by paying a nature restoration levy. <\/p>\n
![\"Bats](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764109274_485_newFile-7.jpg\")
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open image in gallery<\/p>\n
Bats control insect populations (Getty Images\/iStockphoto)<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery bat eats between two and 4,000 tiny insects a night, and if you didn’t have bats as natural pest controllers, we would have a lot more animal disease, more crop disease and a lot of human disease, all of which would need to be controlled through chemical interventions. So bats actually perform a really important ecosystem service,\u201d Ms Hayns said.<\/p>\n
The committee blamed slow house-building on \u201ca lack of cross-government policy alignment and co-ordination, fragmented data systems and a dearth of ecological, planning and construction skills\u201d.<\/p>\n
Research by the RSPB found the public overwhelmingly does not want nature sacrificed for short-term growth.<\/p>\n
The Wildlife Trusts say exempting small developments from biodiversity net gain rules would inhibit the green economy and allow developers to avoid compensation obligations worth \u00a3250m a year. <\/p>\n
Government shifts on nature protections risks torpedo-ing business confidence in private investment in nature recovery, the trusts say.<\/p>\n
Ms Speight said: \u201cWe know that we’ve lost, for example, 38 million birds in the last 50 years. Nature’s in a really bad state, and this government promised to be the most nature-positive government this nation has ever seen. And we then get all the kind of anti-nature rhetoric we’ve had over the past kind of six months.\u201d<\/p>\n
A government spokesperson said: \u201cWe inherited a failing system that has held up the construction of vital homes and infrastructure, blocking growth and doing nothing for nature\u2019s recovery.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur Planning and Infrastructure Bill creates a win-win for the economy and nature – delivering better outcomes for the environment and helping us build 1.5 million homes to restore the dream of homeownership.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, the government whipped its MPs to vote against bricks with holes in for swifts, despite having in opposition promised to back the move.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-283257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/bc84b6d517259d62a9beabbe0d807502Y29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzYzNzI1MTU2-2.12915848.jpg\")
<\/p>\n