There’s been a mixed reaction to a new bridge built by Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council to help dormice to cross a new road. At a cost of £190,000 for the bridge over a 15 foot stretch of road, many resident are amazed at the cost during a time of major cuts. It certainly raises the question of have we lost all sense of proportion when it comes to wildlife conservation?
Wales, as with the rest of the UK, has a major housing crisis, affordable housing is greatly restricted and Britain has record numbers of homeless. Is it justifiable in those situations to spend £190,000 on helping mice to cross the road? If local councils or the national government is going to spend more money on homes and protecting homes of mice and ducks instead of providing affordable homes for the next generation are we at risk of alienating the public from wildlife conservation?
Obviously there are the middle-aged and middle to higher income people who own homes in the countryside and they want to protect their views and keeps development levels low to protect the values of their own homes. But we have a new generation of young people growing up who have no hope of buying an affordable house or even of renting a home because of the lack of house building over the last 20 years. Can public authorities really justify spending this level of money in building a bridge for mice when young people are having their housing benefits cut and being forced to live on the streets?
There’s a major consultation going on at the moment because of the budget cuts. We need to think again about what can really be effective for wildlife and what is just posturing and wasteful spending. Spending £190,000 on a bridge for wildlife is just not acceptable and I predict it will be a failure in it’s task. We need to start to join up our thinking about wildlife and other areas of government. The Department of Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs have recently slashed the number of quangos it supports and is expected to be one of the hardest hit departments in the coming budget cuts. For me a perfectly reasonable question to ask is; do we still need Defra as a stand alone ministry?
Surely the budget cuts can be used to take a radical rethink on how we see wildlife conservation and how we protect biodiversity. There’s been recent research to show that while bees in the countryside are suffering those that live within towns are flourishing – but this isn’t new information. We’ve known for years that an acre of housing estate has much more biodiversity than an acre of farmland. But we spend vast sums of money paying farmers to keep farms profitable while we restrict house building in the countryside. From a wildlife perspective the house building with the wide diversity of habitats and plants on offer in a garden is much more beneficial than mantaining a farmers field.
Wildlife needs to be protected and conserved but we have to be very careful that things are realistic, proportionate and acceptable otherwise public support for conservation could falter and start to fall if it’s felt that nature conservation is either a waste or misuse of money. It’s highly unlikely that a charity would have been able to raise the money from a bridge of this cost through a public appeal, officials in charge of public money need to realise they have a responsibility to spend that money effectively.
