Examination of Witness (Questions 240-259)
10 DECEMBER 2003
MR JOHN
REES
Q240 Chairman: What would you put in
it?
Mr Rees: My interests principally
are not with mammals. You can see the focus here. I think that
there are many other species that we need to be worrying about.
For instance, some of the deeper water species which are being
very badly affected, such as the coral species, which we need
to be protecting in a much greater way than we are at present.
Q241 Chairman: I go back to another of
your answers—again, the offshore phenomenon—sandbanks,
reefs, submarine structures made by leaking gases, and submerged
sea caves. Are they the total extent of the things that we can
conserve under the Annex I listing in the Habitats Directive?
Mr Rees: At present, yes, in open
sea areas.
Q242 Chairman: That is it?
Mr Rees: This is where we need
a better classification and where we need the detail. This is
a really good example of why we have to do this. In BGS we feel
that, using our existing data, we could take the classification
a lot further than we have at present. The landscapes and the
habitats we are recognising at present are based on our fairly
crude sediment mapping and bathymetry—that is, the water
depth. There is a lot more we could do to split up the landscapes
at present and provide more habitat information. This is a good
illustration of why we need to do that.
Q243 Mr Breed: Under the Habitats Directive
it is possible to designate some SACs as "temporary".
Why was that introduced?
Mr Rees: With planning, as you
know, once you have made a plan, plans are made on plans and it
is very difficult to get rid of a plan later on. You will find
that one boundary is used to set another boundary and, although
you might get rid of the first boundary, you will always have
it in the second. I think that it is widely recognised in Europe
that you have this proliferation of boundaries and they are often
seen as unhelpful, especially if they are removed later on because
they are recognised as temporary. By setting something up only
where we have a fairly good idea of where it needs to be, at least
we will stop that proliferation.
Q244 Mr Breed: Typically, how big would
these areas be?
Mr Rees: They vary, depending
on the habitat. Some of the features which we are presently looking
at in terms of designation can be whole sand-wave fields, areas
perhaps the size of Anglesey. They are pretty big. In other cases,
they may be part of a marine cliff and only a few metres wide.
Q245 Mr Breed: So you could have a temporary
site literally the size of a place like Anglesey?
Mr Rees: I would not have thought
a temporary site, but there have been problems with such temporary
sites.
Q246 Mr Breed: For how long are they
temporary? Is there a limit to their temporariness?
Mr Rees: One of the problems is,
because everyone is dealing with poor resolution and poor data
generally, they are given a "temporary" site, then investigations
are undertaken to see what is there, what the habitat is, how
important the habitat is, and maybe after doing that you think,
"It's not that important", and you remove its status.
Q247 Mr Breed: The Commission have said
that we should not go round designating things as "temporary"
if we think it likely that there will be evidence coming forward
at a later stage to change that. That is a sort of warning to
say that we should not be doing it wholesale. You believe that
is obviously a sensible approach?
Mr Rees: I think that it is quite
sensible.
Q248 Mr Breed: And one which in general
is being adhered to.
Mr Rees: Yes. If we had far more
complete data, I do not think that we would be going through this
phase in the first place, because we would know much better whether
what we are looking at in that site is actually a real rarity,
or whether it is something that we can find in 2,000 other places
around the UK coast. At present we cannot say that because we
do not know about the distribution elsewhere. So when we find,
say, a new coral species or a new invertebrate, we will perhaps
put a "temporary" designation on it and then find afterwards
that it is not needed.
Q249 Mr Breed: By definition, you cannot
really know that when you put the "temporary" designation
on it. You cannot know that you are going to find stuff to be
absolutely deselected. I just wondered how that functioned.
Mr Rees: One of the important
things to realise is that there is a very close correlation between
the geology of the seabed and what you have living on it. If we
find a species which lives on a certain substrate, at least if
we have a high-resolution map we will be able to say that that
substrate can be found over 1½% of the UK shelf within this
water depth, and therefore we would expect that we will also find
a similar species distribution.
Q250 Mr Breed: Overall, you would say
that the policy of the "temporary" designation is working
broadly?
Mr Rees: It is broadly working
okay. As an interim measure, it is probably not that harmful.
Q251 Mr Breed: It is not totally dissimilar
to spot listing of buildings, is it, under the grading of English
Heritage?
Mr Rees: At least it is precautionary,
yes.
Q252 Paddy Tipping: You made a good case
for more data, but there is already a lot of data about. You have
told us about the MoD and how they trust just you and nobody else.
Presumably other people have data. I think you said earlier that
the Department of Energy, long defunct, had some data, and the
DTI and Defra must have some data. How far are these datasets
compatible and how far is information shared between them?
Mr Rees: Over recent years there
have been quite big advances in data-sharing, largely because
people have known what data is out there. In fact, we have meta-data
databases. Meta-data is basically a database of data—so
that we know what is out there, who has surveyed it, when it was
done, and for what purpose. That sounds very crude, but it is
very useful for any organisation to know what has been done in
the past and what they could use. That does not mean that they
have free access to the data, but it means that they can contact
another body and get hold of the data, normally at a reasonable
cost.
Q253 Paddy Tipping: So, apart from the
MoD, people are prepared to share?
Mr Rees: Broadly, yes. BGS runs
a site called UKDEAL which is largely for the oil industry. For
instance, anyone wanting to look at oil reserves around the UK
can immediately come to the site and find out who has done what,
what date surveys were done, who drilled what boreholes. For details
of what is in the boreholes or perhaps a seismic survey dataset,
they would have to approach the companies, but we can tell them
whom they should be approaching.
Q254 Paddy Tipping: And the private sector?
The oil companies, the gas companies, the aggregates companies—they
are not secretive about this? They have information and they are
prepared to share it?
Mr Rees: They are secretive and
it is obviously in their interests to be secretive, because they
are all exploration companies and they are all trying to find
a new resource which no one else has. What they normally do, however,
is they trade. In the aggregates industry and in the hydrocarbon
industry that is quite commonplace. They will trade information—well
information, seismic survey information. If another party wants
to come along, however, they would normally have to buy it. Clearly,
if it is old data it will be a lot cheaper than new data, but
that is the way it would normally work.
Q255 Paddy Tipping: Is there any conflict
between the extractive industries—the oil companies, for
example—and the conservation bodies, bodies like the RSPB
and WWF?
Mr Rees: There are conflicts.
In fact, I should qualify what I have just said in terms of the
aggregate industry and the hydrocarbons industry. If an oil company
is going to put a rig somewhere or if a dredging company is going
to look at a new prospect, the environmental data associated with
that is free and open. There is no problem about that, and that
is the way it should be. It is in terms of the geological data
and perhaps the reserve data—that is what they will maintain
their private access to. May I qualify something? You were asking
about how joined up the organisations were and how much information-sharing
there was. That is also increasing. I can give you another illustration
of something BGS is doing with the Hydrographic Office and the
Ordnance Survey in the coastal zone. It is ensuring that we are
providing data, which is all for the same datum and the same projection—it
sounds as though we should have done this a long time ago but
it is just happening now—and, as a result, coastal zone
users will be able to make sure that, when they use one of the
three datasets, it will integrate completely with the others.
Q256 Ms Atherton: Why was there insufficient
time for technical advice to be incorporated into the licensing
process in the DTI Strategic Environment Assessment?
Mr Rees: We generally have quite
short timescales to work to.
Q257 Ms Atherton: Who creates those timescales?
Is it the DTI?
Mr Rees: I think that it is largely
the DTI we are talking about here. Yes, it is too rushed. It does
not give us a chance in all cases to look at an area in sufficient
detail, before something goes on, to make a very good assessment
about what is there. I am not saying that this is always the case,
but there certainly has been a rush in the past.
Q258 Ms Atherton: So are they less than
useless?
Mr Rees: Not less than useless,
but I think that we could do better.
Q259 Ms Atherton: How much more time
would you need?
Mr Rees: I would have to talk
to my colleagues about this. Can I get back to you on that and
give you some idea?[12]
Ms Atherton: Certainly.
12 Ev 105 Back
| 
