Illegal habitat destruction

 It pays to disobey

This survey has shown that the illegal destruction of habitat is one of the major concerns nationally.
 

• It is rated as the most significant crime across Britain, being particularly prevalent in the southern half of England.

• 87% of the wildlife officers who responded to the survey felt that the fines were too small. Legislation concerning habitat destruction focuses on species which are deemed to be nationally threatened, such as water voles, dormice and great crested newts, or others – chiefly bats – which are regarded as being under particular threat from development.

We will focus on great crested newts for reasons that will become clear. Three examples should suffice to illustrate the ranges of fines that tend to be imposed for harming the habitat of great crested newts. (Most of this information is available in press releases on the English Nature website).

• In Essex in 2005, an individual was fined £250 with £35 costs for damaging the resting place of Great Crested Newts.

• In Co. Durham in March 2005, a man was fined £1,000 and ordered to pay £500 costs, after dredging a large pond of weed in which he knew there were great crested newts. Numerous newts and frogs were subsequently found to have been trapped in the removed weed, some of which had been killed. The man had been planning to build three bungalows adjacent to the pond.

• In July 2002, a housing developer from North Yorkshire was fined £7,600 for destroying a large colony of great crested newts at a former Butlin’s holiday camp. According to English Nature, “A wildlife survey found at least 272 newts living in an old swimming pool, boating pool, disused water tanks and smaller ponds on the derelict site, with the total newt population estimated at over 1000. The mix of rubble, rough grassland, trees, shrubs and derelict buildings were perfect for the thriving population…. The developers applied for a licence after consulting with English Nature and carrying out a detailed survey of the site but were turned down in September last year as they did not have valid planning permission. Weeks later they levelled the site.”

It seems intuitively obvious that these fines are low – but for an objective assessment of the scale of the fines, we sought to compare them with the costs faced by developers for conducting a survey and providing suitable mitigation for compliance with the law.

We contacted English Nature, who do not appear to have access to this information. They take the view that if developers build on sites that have wildlife value, they should expect to pay the cost.

A developer in Gloucestershire was more forthcoming. Planning permission for a site at Olney was conditional on their carrying out a full environment survey. This revealed the presence of one great crested newt in a pond. The mitigation which was thus required involved fencing the pond and translocating the newt after its hibernation. Later, two others were found. All three were moved to a suitable site. The total cost of this activity to date is £40,138.50, with the developer expecting to pay another £5,000 before the project is completed.

These actual costs are far higher than any of the fines levied in the cases above: it is more than twenty-five times higher than in the weed-dredging case in Durham, and over five times higher than that for the destruction of at least 272 newts and their habitat in North Yorkshire – even though the number of newts involved (three) was far lower than in either case.

The developer was also anxious to point out the additional, less visible, costs with which they are faced in these circumstances. These include paying interest for a year on a loan of £1-3million, and management salaries for the same duration: together, this may amount to well in excess of £100,000. Although these costs are less tangibly related to the newts than those of mitigation, they are no less real to the developer.

It cannot help the conservation of the great crested newt (or any other species) to have such a vast gap between the high cost of obedience to the law and the low cost of infringement. We cannot avoid concluding that the scale of the fines is so low as to make a mockery of the law. Attention also needs to be paid to the very high scale of actual costs that developers face when they are committed to discharging their obligations to the letter and spirit of the law. It is beyond the scope of the present report to recommend ways by which this might be achieved while retaining effectiveness in conservation, but neglecting this issue will encourage developers to flout the law in order to pay the comparatively negligible cost of a fine.

Naturewatch recommends that a Parliamentary Select Committee should focus on the illegal destruction of habitat, so that the issue of the high costs of compliance and the low penalties for disobedience might be addressed. This might be a natural topic for the Environmental Audit Committee as a follow-up to their October 2004 Wildlife Crime report. Alternatively, as the subject cuts across several departments, it might be equally suitable for the select committees associated with DEFRA, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister or the Home Office.