{"id":449104,"date":"2026-02-27T20:57:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T20:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/449104\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T20:57:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T20:57:22","slug":"plea-to-reverse-catastrophic-decline-of-wildlife-after-latest-walsall-green-belt-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/449104\/","title":{"rendered":"Plea to reverse \u2018catastrophic decline of wildlife\u2019 after latest Walsall green belt decision"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbcwildlife.org.uk\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust<\/a> said the inspector\u2019s ruling of 115 homes at Longwood Lane, Walsall, was \u2018a real blow for biodiversity.\u2019<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.expressandstar.com\/newsletters\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Get the latest headlines delivered straight to your inbox with the Express &amp; Star\u2019s free newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Michael Glasson, a tree verifier for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.woodlandtrust.org.uk\/support-us\/woodland-trust-membership\/?utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=cpc&amp;utm_campaign=membership2024&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=23603886421&amp;gbraid=0AAAAAodncPd7buNq8LB9Q2j9pgF-8WezP&amp;gclid=CjwKCAiA2PrMBhA4EiwAwpHyC0Er_od0gewNCEXQhYxHEq9XkyISI-UDaqcyfEuV_EGAEp93E97NCxoCO3oQAvD_BwE\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Woodland Trust,<\/a> said if that particular site could be built on, then any green belt site in Walsall could.<\/p>\n<p>To mitigate the loss of biodiversity, developer William Davis Home proposed to buy off-site credits at the Buzzards Valley Nature Reserve in Tamworth.<\/p>\n<p>The Wildlife Trust said: \u201cWalsall\u2019s loss would be someone else\u2019s gain. We do not wish to see the species-rich becoming richer at the expense of the species-poor becoming poorer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Michael added: \u201cTo compensate for the loss of wildlife, they\u2019ll give money to a private nature reserve in Tamworth. It is an insult.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow does that help the people in Walsall? I think it was the wrong judgement, really unfortunate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of people put a huge amount of energy and time into this, and the planning inspector could have made the decision on day one and saved everyone a lot of time and money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Michael said the site at Longwood Lane is prime green belt, totally untouched, with four ancient and ten veteran trees.<\/p>\n<p>It is also part of a SLINC (Site of Local Importance to Nature Conservation).<\/p>\n<p>Michael said: \u201cWith modern agriculture a lot of the plants found on the site are locally rare. There was bistort and great horse trail. You can find them in fossils but there\u2019s a colony of them on the site.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is so rich in all these plants, I thought we had a really strong case.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe really worrying precedent is that a developer can basically stick a pin in the map, anywhere in the green belt and say this is grey belt and chances are they will win.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Director of nature recovery at the Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust, Dr Norman Dandy, said: \u201cThe planning inspector\u2019s decision is a real blow for biodiversity in the Black Country.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNational policy must ensure that everyone has an equal chance to access quality green space in their daily lives. We urge the Government to reverse the catastrophic decline of wildlife.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust said the inspector\u2019s ruling of 115 homes at Longwood Lane, Walsall,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[1397,5055,2652,50,90,56,54,55,2656,4407],"class_list":["post-449104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-environment","tag-ldrs","tag-local-hubs","tag-news","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-walsall","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449104","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=449104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}