Bird Licence Success

Part of the work undertaken by Ellendale Environmental as an ecological consultancy, is to give expert advice to our clients to enable them to stay within the environmental laws when providing ecology surveys and environmental management. Ellendale Environmental is a dynamic consultancy and we work with our clients to understand the environmental challenges of their projects within the context of UK and European environmental law.

The nesting bird season is defined as 1st March to 31st July each year, although birds do typically nest both before and after those dates. All birds, their nests and eggs are protected by law under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 (as amended) and it is an offence, with certain exceptions, to:

a) intentionally kill, injure or take any wild bird;

b) intentionally take, damage or destroy the nest of any wild bird while it is in use or being built (NB: The nests of white-tailed eagles, ospreys and golden eagles are protected all year round);

c) intentionally take or destroy the egg of any wild bird;

d) have in one’s possession or control any wild bird (dead or alive), part of a wild bird or egg of a wild bird which has been taken in contravention of the Act, the Protection of Birds Act 1954 or the law of any EU Member State (which implements the EU Birds Directive 1979); and/or

e) intentionally or recklessly disturb any wild bird listed on Schedule 1 while it is nest building or is in, on or near a nest with eggs or young; or disturb the dependent young of such a bird.

Recently, Ellendale Environmental have been working with Balfour Beatty and National Grid providing environmental management, surveys and advice with regards to breeding birds on a vital overhead line refurbishment and tower replacement project in South Wales.

The project has several key ‘outage’ dates when the electricity will be diverted away from the existing transmission line so that critical work can take place. If, at this point, a nesting bird was encountered on the route it could mean significant delays and costs to the project.

During the last month, our ecologist has surveyed the transmission line and proposed access routes to identify and record any locations where the vegetation clearance, access construction or refurbishment works could have potential to affect breeding birds later in the months. Where possible, vegetation clearance was then scheduled for completion before the start of nesting bird season in order to mitigation the risk of disturbing nesting birds.

Ellendale Environmental have been consulting with National Resources Wales (NRW), on behalf of our client, to produce a method statement and to secure a licence which allows the on-site team to mitigate for nesting birds and reduce the risk of project delays. We are pleased to announce that the licence has now been granted, thanks to the hard work of all concerned.