Last week I had the privilege of presenting the Woodland Trust’s evidence, of the impact of HS2 (Phase 1) on ancient woodland, to
the parliamentary HS2 Bill Committee. This was the culmination of about two years’ work from myself and colleagues, following the publication of HS2’s plans and accompanying Environmental Statement in 2013.
The Trust has been in constant dialogue with HS2 Ltd over their plans for the last two years, but this was an opportunity, through the archaic process of a hybrid bill, to present our case to the Bill Committee of MPs.
Prior to this, we have had some minor concessions, and some major ones, such as
extending the Chilterns Tunnel to avoid three ancient woodlands.
Nonetheless, we believe the whole approach HS2 Ltd has taken to ancient woodland has been well below the standard expected for a major government-sponsored national infrastructure project. Our oral evidence,
as recorded in the minutes, starting at paragraph 306, demonstrates that HS2 Ltd failed to:
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Assess the extent of ancient woodland when deciding the route (they missed 14 sites that we had to tell them about!)
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Avoid the ancient woodland along the route, such as by extending tunnels
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Reduce indirect damage (noise, pollution, light etc), such as by buffering
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Adequately compensate for the destruction of ancient woodland
To add insult to injury, HS2 Ltd published a report on 11 January claiming that their approach aimed to deliver the project with "No net loss to biodiversity".
This was built on a poorly explained methodology that failed to recognise the importance of ancient woodland loss, and suggesting the loss of this irreplaceable habitat can be "offset".
This is against all the advice from Defra and Natural England, which notes that destruction of ancient woodland will always produce a "residual loss" that cannot be offset.
HS2 Ltd further dented their credibility by putting the incorrect figure for area of ancient woodland lost into their calculations – 14ha (35 acres) instead of the 30.5ha (75 acres) lost.
The Committee members didn’t just listen to my evidence, they asked searching questions, particularly around the following issues:
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Translocation of ancient woodland soil
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How the scheme might provide compensation outside the narrow corridor of the route
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How much tree planting is required to adequately compensate for loss of ancient woodland
On the latter point, the Committee noted that the Trust would rather the loss was avoided, but then pressed HS2 Ltd hard on how they'd decided upon the rather small overall amount of woodland creation proposed. The inability of HS2 Ltd to be able to even say how many hectares of planting they have planned did seem to weaken their defence!
I fervently hope that the Committee members will accept our recommendations and that they:
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Direct HS2 Ltd to avoid destroying ancient woodland where possible, such as by tunnelling
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Direct HS2 Ltd to compensate for unavoidable residual habitat destruction at an appropriate scale (30:1 in the case of new woodland planting for areas of ancient woodland destroyed) and to allow some of this in the wider landscape of the route
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State in their final report that the approach taken by HS2 Ltd to identifying and assessing ancient woodland, and hence determining the route and subsequent operational responses, was seriously flawed, and that best practice should be adopted for subsequent phases of HS2
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Direct HS2 Ltd to set up the Ecological Review Group at the earliest opportunity
I stayed on to listen to the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust and Bucks Wildlife Trust. It was great to hear their support for our stance on ancient woodland, which was much appreciated.
By the end of the afternoon session, Committee Member Mark Hendrick MP was so concerned about the lack of clarity and poor justification for HS2 Ltd’s approach to their ‘metrics’ for justifying their response to loss of ancient woodland and damage to biodiversity that he said:
"Again, if HS2 are judging, or marking their own homework, as far these metrics and biodiversity is concerned, that’s not necessarily a good thing, is it?"
The next stages will be a report by the Committee to parliament, so
keep watching for detailsof how you can get your local MPs to ask further searching questions.