Regular readers of our Conservation Director Martin Harper’s blog may know that over the past two years we’ve been fighting to prevent the development of up to 5,000 houses on an ex-Military training ground at Lodge Hill, in Medway, Kent because of the site’s extraordinary value to the UK’s nightingale population. Martin posted his latest update yesterday.
In Spring 2012, independent surveys by the BTO confirmed Lodge Hill to be one of the most important sites in the country for nightingales and in November last year it officially became the very first (and still only) site in the UK to receive protection specifically for its nightingales. Lodge Hill is now a ‘Site of Special Scientific Interest’ (rather a mouthful!), or SSSI for short, because it has such a high proportion of our country’s entire nightingale population in one place. If you’ve marvelled at the beauty of a nightingale’s song, imagine hearing 84 of them trilling away!
Despite an independent Government planning inspector having advised Medway Council that their overall housing strategy should be withdrawn because this site is too valuable to be developed, which the Council did, the developers have now gone ahead and updated their planning application – they still intend to build over the site.
The application is open for public consultation and the deadline has now been extended from 28 March to 15 April 2014 – if you’d like to register your objection you can find out much more on our Lodge Hill Casework pages. There you’ll find the history of this case and information about what you can do under the ‘How you can help’ tab, as well as links to Martin’s other blogs.
As ever, thank you for all your support in using your voice to speak out for birds and other wildlife around the UK.