Completed petition Make Natural Resources Wales undertake and publish annual wildlife surveys before felling woodland
NRW manage state forests but fail to undertake population surveys of protected species before felling woodland. To avoid biodiversity loss they should assess the size of rare species populations present before felling operations are undertaken, so that they ensure habitat loss does not cause decline. The population data should be published before any trees are sold for cutting. Currently they only try and stop rare animals and birds being killed by harvesting machines but this is not enough.
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It’s not good enough to simply try and avoid killing rare animals when trees are cut down. Birds, bats, dormice, newts need certain types of forest habitat and cutting it down means they can’t survive there anymore. Clare Pillman CEO of NRW said ‘Mammals like the red squirrel and water vole, birds like the curlew and plants such as the fen orchid squeezed out by loss of habitat loss’.
https://bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-58641886…
NRW need to come clean and survey populations before tree felling takes place and publish the data so the public can see if the agency are causing population declines. They should be taking the lead making sure rare species have enough habitat and not just cutting forests down all the time without showing what this has done to bats and dormice.
This petition was considered by the Petitions Committee
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