Thursday 9 October 2014

HS2 – can local wildlife benefit from a Slow Speed corridor?

Bird watching’s for middle-aged biddies with moustaches. Or so I always thought. Or possibly I am moving into that very category. Whatever, that’s how I spent a sunny Sunday in early October; walking around College Lake, binocs at a jaunty angle, enjoying the bright, autumnal light, picking succulent blackberries, and interrogating (from a distance) the birds on the lake to see what was out there.

BBOWT, our local wildlife conservation charity, runs College Lake; just outside Tring, just inside Buckinghamshire, BBOWT has developed it into one of the foremost locations in Bucks for bird watching. It’s a fantastic facility for humans and nature.

BBOWT runs nature reserves across Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire, and it’s not always easy: dependent on grants and public generosity, long-term survival is never assured. Now, of course, there is a new threat to our wildlife habitats in this area: HS2.

BBOWT is extremely exercised, for good reason, about this proposed development. Whilst it won’t directly affect College Lake, its impact on some other BBOWT reserves, and habitats outside the reserves, will be immeasurable, and permanent.

The stated intent of HS2 is that there should be ‘no net loss to biodiversity’, but many people fear that should it go ahead, it will massively impact local wildlife, and there is concern that the existing environmental analyses significantly underplay this issue. Local losses would include Bechstein’s bats and certain rare butterflies; wildflower meadows, wetlands and ancient woodlands would be damaged and even lost forever.

Whilst BBOWT opposes HS2, it also proposes a way that, should it be built, might mitigate this immense damage.

Its alternative vision of HS2 argues (based on thorough, academic research) that around 15,000 hectares of interlinked wild places could be established along the length of the route, for no net expense, where people could walk, cycle and enjoy nature, ultimately providing a ‘net gain’ for wildlife.

Their report ‘HS2: A vision for large-scale nature restoration along the Proposed Route’ makes the environmental, social and economic case for the Government properly to address the impact of HS2 on wildlife and ecosystems.

Personally, I find it hard to envisage how the impact of HS2 on our wildlife might be reduced to anything like an acceptable level, but at least BBOWT is trying. So you don’t have to set off in pursuit of the hirsute to support BBOWT, you could just become a member. Beards particularly welcome.

http://www.bbowt.org.uk/

11+ appeals under the new sytem (post 2013)

To those whose children have just done the 11+, well survived. It feels great when it’s over yet still too early to think about the outcome.

However, with apologies, this article is about appealing, which you may have to tangle with if you are faced with a near miss and feel that your child should go to grammar school.

Not only has the 11+ exam changed recently, the appeal system has too. I have been involved in appeals under both systems, and had to work hard to get a grip on the new one. This article is an attempt to explain it, as I understand it. If you appeal, please gather your own research and information since this article merely flags up some points to think about.

Pre-2012, appeals were made by submitting written evidence of academic ability and any extenuating circumstances, then presenting before an appeals panel.

This has been replaced by a two-tier system. The first application is to a ‘selection review’; a paper-only submission to a panel of three head teachers. If you are unsuccessful at this stage, you may then go on to the second tier, namely a full appeal before a panel.

Schools tend to recommend going through the selection review. However, be aware that:

1. The selection review tier is optional, so you can bypass it and go just for a full appeal. One disadvantage (this past year) was that full appeals were heard very late in the academic year and after allocation of school places.

2. If you are unsuccessful at selection review, and proceed to a full appeal, you have an additional hurdle: the Admissions Authority will assert that your child’s review was fair, consistent and objective, so your appeal should not be heard. To get your hearing, you must first successfully argue that the selection review was not carried out in a fair, consistent and objective manner. Tricky, and you won’t face this if you bypass the selection review.

I was curious to discover what proportion of people understand the new appeal system so I carried out a small survey amongst friends dealing with the 11+ in 2013. Out of everyone who answered my enquiry, just one family realised that the selection review was optional and that there is also an appeal; they had gleaned that from 11+ forums, not from the BCC website; have a look at http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/

Cyclamen: my autumn roses

I love the Spring: that particular vivid green show of new leaf, the promise of a twig, bare but for some shyly swelling copper buds bursting suddenly into a profusion of blossom, and most of all, the sudden proliferation of yellow narcissi after the dull grey or even white of a long, dark winter.

So when it’s autumn, what to do? Trees carry elderly, tired-looking foliage which will slowly give up and fall off, the veg has vegged, the few flowers that remain in my garden look leggy, seedy (in both senses) and frankly like it’s time to put on their slippers and have some hot cocoa. Everything seems to be saying – enough now – we’ve done our bit for the year - except for a small bright bunch of wild cyclamen shouting ‘We’re here! Look at us!’ under a bush in my front garden.

We’re not talking about any of the voluptuous pink-knickered cultivated varieties, which adorn your windowsill so brightly until they get bored and slump into a vulgar heap, but the small, dainty, wild types which grow in woodland, between mountain rocks and along gritty roadsides throughout the Mediterranean, where summers are arid and winters more temperate. Many cyclamen bloom, as a result of that climate, in the Autumn and are hardy enough to cope with our winters.

Essentially a woodland plant, as the trees above them shed their leaves and early autumn rains reach the earth below, the plants spring into life, flowers first, pink and white heads nodding on fragile stems. Then as they fade, the delicately patterned, highly decorative leaves give verdancy to the increasingly barren soil. In fact, it is the foliage which give a common autumnal variety its name - Cyclamen hederifolium – ‘ivy leaved’.

For years I have planted Spring bulbs everywhere I can so that they will give me the first hint of the wakening up of the soil and warmth in the air, announcing the coming of longer days and more sunshine, and I have completely overlooked softening the edges of the colder, shorter days by planting something which will cheerfully and robustly bloom in September.

From now on, though, I will build up my beds of wild cyclamen and will look forward to them as much as I do to daffodils.

To everything there is a season.