Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

A bird-brained scheme

And there’s scant evidence to say it will work

While walking or riding on the beautiful heathland near my home, I have noticed a growing number of signs telling me to respect ground-nesting birds.

I keep the dogs close. I don’t let the horses trample through the undergrowth. But that is not proving good enough for the wildlife authorities who have begun to spend millions of pounds on a bizarre programme to divert human beings from large areas of heathland — not only where I walk but in dozens of other places across the south-east of England, so that these popular beauty spots can be left for the birds.

Natural England (the government agency for conservation) and local authorities in Surrey, Berkshire and Hampshire are campaigning to safeguard what they called SPAs, Special Protection Areas, by creating something they call SANGS, which is so loony that no one can agree whether it stands for Suitable Accessible Natural Green Space or Suitable Alternative Natural Green Space. Either way, welcome to the wacky world of rare-bird protection.

In this world, you, the human being living in an area known to conservationists as the Thames Basin SPAs, will be dissuaded from visiting your local heathland and instructed to go instead to a disused farm down the road, for example, where your local authority and wildlife chiefs have created for you an approximation of the favourite place you thought you were enjoying and appreciating but in fact were ruining. Allegedly.

The policy covers 8,274 hectares of Berkshire, Hampshire and Surrey, including Ockham and Wisley Common, where I walk and ride, and Whitmoor Common near Guildford, where I used to walk until I got fed up of being accosted by environmentalists brandishing leaflets telling me how many birds I was slaughtering just by being there.

There are three rare species in these heaths: woodlark, nightjar and Dartford warbler. They nest in small numbers on or near the ground and are susceptible to predation and disturbance.

On Ockham and Wisley, for example, recent surveys show up to seven Dartford warbler nests, four woodlark and five nightjar.

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