Examination of Witnesses (Questions 155
- 159)
THURSDAY 20 MAY 2004
SERGEANT PETER
CHARLESTON, MR
JOHN LLOYD
JONES, MS
GILL BILSBOROUGH
AND SERGEANT
IAN GUILDFORD
Chairman: Can I welcome the rest of the
line-up. Thank you for joining us today.
Q155 Paul Flynn: Thank you very much
for your evidence. During the oral evidence we had last week from
English Nature we heard how difficult it was to monitor the SSSIs.
They told the Committee that they had a programme to visit each
SSSI once every six years. How do we monitor the sites in Wales?
Mr Lloyd Jones: Can I refer that
question to Gil Bilsborough because we have been doing some work
now on assessing the conditions of the SSSIs in Wales.
Ms Bilsborough: We have got our
own programme as well on a six-yearly basis. The monitoring standards
that we follow are those set by the JNCC so they will be the same
common standards as English Nature. We have a key target at the
moment of 20% of our SAC site, which are the European sites, and
many of those wrap up withy SSSIs. We have just had a rapid review
exercise also, which looks at the features of SSSIs and how they
are affected. The very first statistics to come out of that review
have shown us that 47% of features of SSSIs are in favourable
or encourageable condition. Unfortunately, 52% do not meet that
requirement and 1% has been lost.
Q156 Paul Flynn: How many people
do you have on this? What is the area they have to cover in each
one?
Ms Bilsborough: I understand the
rapid review programme covers the whole of Wales and there are
five dedicated staff to deal with that.
Mr Lloyd Jones: In fact 12% of
Wales is SSSIs, so we are talking about a significant amount of
land.
Q157 Paul Flynn: Do you think it
was too ambitious and that there are too many SSSIs to control,
with the amount of damage that has resulted?
Mr Lloyd Jones: First of all,
they have been designated as SSSIs, and therefore we have to make
sure that they are in favourable condition. The other thing we
have to look at is, if they do not reach the standard, then is
it as a result of neglect, or is it the result of criminal activities?
Again, we have to be quite certain, if they are not in favourable
condition, exactly the reason for that; or, on the other hand,
some of them could be in an unfavourable condition simply because
of natural processes like global warming.
Q158 Paul Flynn: What is the extent
of the damage that occurs? What would be a very bad case? The
scale seems to be enormous.
Mr Lloyd Jones: At the extreme
end, the damage would be something like a traditional hay meadow
that had been ploughed up.
Q159 Paul Flynn: What are the global
warming ones?
Mr Lloyd Jones: One classic example
would be the Snowdon Lily; exactly where does the Snowdon Lily
go to with global warming? It is already very high up Snowdon.
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