Natural England biodiversity metric will let valuable wildlife habitat be logged as ‘degraded’ land and penalise rewilding, warn ecologists
The government’s new metric for biodiversity will have to be urgently improved if it is going to be fit for purpose, academics and conservationists have warned.
The biodiversity net gain (BNG) metric, published by Natural England in July, outlines how new roads, houses and other building projects must achieve no net loss of biodiversity, or achieve a 10% net gain elsewhere if nature is damaged on site.