This is a recycled cartoon from last year, but then the issue has come round again this year.
And the RSPB issued a press release on the subject as follows:
Nests Not Nets
The RSPB wants to see nests and not nets, and is appalled to see netting used once again to prevent birds nesting. We are facing a twin nature and climate crisis: wildlife must be allowed to thrive and we all have a role to play in not letting this practice go unchallenged.
The RSPB is aware of netting being placed on around 20 trees on the University of Cambridge campus which has resulted in an impassioned reaction by the public in demanding the removal of the netting. In addition to the obvious concerns, the netting appeared unsafe as the holes were big enough for small birds like robins to get through.
At this time of the year, as birds will be thinking about making the next generation, we need to ensure they have a suitable place to raise their chicks, not preventing from nesting, feeding and gracing us with their beautiful birdsong.
We are asking that developers and planners take their actions into consideration and know the suitable alternatives to netting, which will not threaten and silence nature.
In this important year for wildlife as the world makes key decisions on nature and the environment, it is shocking to see the use of netting on trees rearing its ugly head. We must be supporting nature and helping it to thrive rather than covering trees, hedges and bushes in netting which prevent birds nesting. In addition, netting may become damaged, meaning birds who get into the netting may not be able to escape.
RSPB Operations Director Jeff Knott said: “I can’t believe we’re here again, but we won’t give up. This practice must stop. Nature needs us to do better. Last year we saw cases of netting all over the UK and a corresponding social media campaign to get it removed. It would be a massive own goal for developers to go through all this bad publicity again.”
Britain has lost 40 million birds over the last 50 years and as a society we need to be doing everything we can to halt this decline. It is vital that the use of netting in such instances is reported and everyone can help to spot and stop it.
Members of the public can take action by following these three steps:
- Tell the developer, your local council and your MP how you feel. You can find out who your MP is and how to contact them here: https://members.parliament.uk/constituencies/
- Take photos of the netting and share them with us and your local community using the hashtag #NestsNotNets
- Support each other! We can only save nature if we work together.
ENDS
[registration_form]
And what of the students around the campus? Don’t they see it? Don’t they care? If the answer to that last is no, then who is there to carry on the fight? I thought the younger generations, at least the more educated ones, were at last ‘getting it’.
Nets are put up by idiots. What does that make of the people that walk by, turn a blind eye? Don’t ask the obvious question?
We know that in this case there were protests from ‘the public’ which it seems has resulted in Cambridge University taking down the nets and apologising. Whether the protestors included any students is not recorded. I can’t see that this story, as reported, gives us any basis on which to judge if the students care or not.
Bit off topic.
Mark has written about the worst and least worst Env Ministers.
Here someone else has listed them according to their response to flooding.
https://www.thecanary.co/opinion/2020/02/28/the-last-seven-tory-environment-chiefs-rated-from-worst-to-best-on-how-they-deal-with-floods/
Anybody know why this is happening? Did it seem like a good idea to some genius and everybody simply copied them?
What about swallow, swift and house martin nests? This kind of thinking would suggest that these will be targeted also, presumably before the birds arrive since doing otherwise would be illegal, at least in theory.
Stuart – I can understand why some of it might happen, but this is not a general explanation. It would be an offence knowingly to destroy an active bird’s nest and eggs. It is difficult to contend that you don’t know there is a bird’s nest in a hedge or tree on your business location (and somebody might have pointed it out to you). Therefore in cases where the intention is to remove the tree/hedge (quite probably legally, but perhaps wrongly in some people’s views) at some stage in the nesting season land managers/developers may be preventing birds from nesting so that they cannot be prosecuted for doing what they plan to do when a nest is present.
Someone removing a tree/hedge with active nests can rely on this ‘It is not illegal to destroy a nest, egg or bird if it can be shown that the act was the incidental result of a lawful operation which could not reasonably have been avoided.’ but that depends on the bit about it being avoidable. netting shows that the developer is trying to avoid any possibility of harming nests.
See the helpful explanation by the RSPB https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/wildlife-and-the-law/wildlife-and-countryside-act/
But, some of this is simply idiocacy!
From professional experience: developers will often have conditions attached to a planning approval that prohibits removal of trees or hedges within the bird nesting season. If your application is delayed and looks likely to be granted in the spring then it can delay the project starting and the developer misses important targets if the trees or hedgerows are in the way of the work. The plants are going to be removed legally anyway so the nets aren’t the devil they’re made out to be. Of course if your planning application is contentious then netting is totally wrong as the developer is often reducing the habitat before it has been approved as being appropriate for removal.