BNG and Habitat Condition Assessments

 Mateo Lewis

Biodiversity Net Gain, Habitat Condition Assessment, Baseline Survey, Survey Design

Client: Confidential

 

 

 

 

 

A scenic view of rolling green fields under a bright blue sky with fluffy white clouds, featuring trees and a distant farmhouse.

 

 

The Brief

During the summer months of 2023 TCL's ecology department was commissioned to help with a set of regional habitat mapping and condition assessment surveys for a large landowner. TCL visited over 20 sites to produce habitat maps using the UKHab classification methodology, for use by the landowner in future BNG baselining and natural capital assessments.

 

 

Areas

Conservation And Biodiversity

Key Stakeholders

Natural England - Department for environment, food & rural affairs

 

Opportunites

  • Better understand ecological conditions of a site habitats, their floral diversity and the existing features that support notable and protected species.
  • Gather baseline data to be used to inform potential habitat enhancements and resulting unit gains when modelled using the Biodiversity Net Gain Metric.
  • Help inform BNG unit baseline calculations for future use in development and planning on surveyed sites.

Challenges

  • Sites often covered large areas and good pre-survey route planning was required to ensure the land was covered in the most comprehensive way possible while remaining sensitive to time constraints.
  • The function of the sites visited meant that health and safety was of high priority during visits, with cross-site contamination being of particular concern. We planned site visits carefully and procured additional sets of workwear to ensure cross contamination risks were minimised.

 

 

Outcomes

 

 

Key information relating to the sites' habitats was collated, and for each site an annotated map was produced using QGIS. In addition, we completed a habitat condition assessment for every individual habitat parcel recorded on each site. Condition assessments require ecologists to answer a series of questions concerning each habitat's historic management, current plant species diversity, occurrence of disease or pests, amongst other pre-defined criteria. These assessments are required to inform a site's BNG unit baseline value score.

With condition assessments and mapping complete, all the information necessary to continue with a BNG baseline evaluation is now ready and the landowner can continue with a natural capital assessment to inform future land management decisions.

 

 

 

 

 

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