Good morning all! I'm Steve Johnson from the little known village of Whitwick in NW Leics. at the moment we are fighting a battle against developers to stop a 1500-2000 house development on farmland on the outskirts of Whitwick. It used to have lapwings resident sometime ago though I can't say I have seen any for a considerable time,but I do believe skylarks are still nesting there.The development is going to destroy this habitat completely as far as I can tell,even the tree planting promised won't be suitable habitat for skylarks.Can any one tell me if housing developments are stopped by skylarks or are they just 'mitigated' ,like one of our other rarities,the Great Crested Newt, which is constantly mitigated, i.e. moved out of the way or as has been the case on at least two occasions locally,the habitat has been deliberately destroyed.
steve j
Hi Steve, it is likely that in many housing projects land that would have been used by skylarks for nesting (open farmland) will be lost. However it would be worth stressing the importance of creating ideal habitat to compensate for such loss in any opposition you submit during the consultation phase. You might be interested in our Take Action pack that has some advice on how to go about protecting wildlife sites in your area, see the link below.
www.rspb.org.uk/.../takeaction
Warden Intern at Otmoor.