Agenda item

The Ecologist explained that the purpose of the report was to give a bit more structure to some of the biodiversity work being done, that was presented to the previous meeting. He hoped that the message from the report was that a lot of the work was cross departmental. The Ecologist acknowledged that RCT was a place of outstanding biodiversity, with the four main priorities being trying to protect what was there, to manage the habitats, raise awareness, and recording what was there. He noted that RCT was a place rich in biodiversity, where people can find rare and interesting species and habitats, even including species new to science.

The Ecologist then took Members through some of the key areas of work, giving a flavour of the direction of work including the planning process, and how ecology is considered in that very important function. This led on to the new Local Development Plan (LDP) which considered Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC) and working on the new LDP, including a new ecological policy. There was a big piece of work around planning which led to ecological mitigation needed for sites, working alongside the legal department on things such as S106 agreements. Another piece of work was the Local Nature Plan, which was a whole community plan trying to pull together what was known about RCT and the biodiversity, to provide evidence based and feedback from the community to build up what was important and why it was important.

The Ecologist continued that the fourth area the report talked about was council land management e.g., local nature reserves, large key countryside sites and living landscape sites and the fifth area was the living landscape project which was being piloted in the next couple of years, with 23 sites over 29 wards and was an attempt to have a network of managed sites, close to communities and have real biodiversity hot spots, linking communities. He noted that real progress had been made on the living landscape project over the last few months and more work would be done over the summer and going forward. This was a big area of work, and it was hoped it would become a demonstration project. The sixth area was the grass management e.g., conversation grazing, cut and collect and wild verges work and was a good example of cross departmental work. The Ecologist noted the ‘Let’s talk RCT – Wildflowers’ website, with an appeal for people to put sites forward for wildflower management. The seventh piece of work, that had taken a lot of focus, was the climate change resilience work and looking at how natural solutions could deliver biodiversity and carbon storage and natural flood management e.g., manage habitats better, restoring peatbogs and having natural tree regeneration, identified as a way of increasing tree cover, as it didn’t count currently.

The Ecologist ended his report by nothing that the eighth area of work was community engagement, as there was a real thirst from the community to find out more about biodiversity and the concern people had. He noted that they hadn’t been able to do walks and talks, over the last few years but the local nature plan had done some good web-based consultation. The final piece of work was that all this fed back into the biodiversity duty, which was a duty imposed on the local authority to show incremental improvements in biodiversity across the whole council. He noted that the Performance Management Service had taken this on. The paper then talked about the challenges and capacity and opportunity that was taken forward. The Ecologist concluded by saying that biodiversity was genuinely cross-departmental and great progress had been made in the last few years and there were great opportunities to be taken forward.

The Chair commended the Ecologist wholeheartedly for his enthusiasm and the report following the update, following which Members were provided with the opportunity to ask questions.

A Member referred to work which was planned for Abercwmboi and parts of the top of Cwmaman and explained previous conversations with an Officer and asked for clarification of what was happening.

The Ecologist explained that the Officer had since left the authority. He knew about the piece in Abercwmboi, and this would be revisited and taken forward.

A Member thanked Officers for the report and the work they did. The Member was pleased to hear about anything to do with ecology and he hoped a couple of things could be moved forward in Tonyrefail, The Member noted a question from a local group, Tonyrefail Environment Association, with regard to daffodils in verges, which had been cut early and asked if it was possible to make the teams aware about these verges.

The Ecologist explained that he would talk to Streetcare, as this was something that had been raised previously, and noted that daffodils did need that period of being left, after having flowered to be able to flower again.

The Chair noted there were 39 sites for wildflowers and asked if the Officer could provide a breakdown of the sites within each of the wards. He also asked if the Council was looking to buy in more wild plants, to plant in the area?

The Ecologist explained that the schedule that Streetcare were pulling together, for this year, would be mapped to produce maps to show where they are and the idea going forward would be to provide much more specific information e.g., where and what. In respect of wildflower planting, the Ecologist noted that in RCT wildflowers existed, in many cases, and one of things that had been found in RCT, compared to other parts of the UK, was that the biodiversity was still there and when the grass management was started, wildflowers in the local seedbanks would grow. He noted that in different parts of RCT there were different natural wildflowers occurring and so the Ecologist felt that it would be better, not to plant loads of wildflowers in the countryside because it made everything look generically the same, as opposed to maintaining that local distinctiveness.

A Member acknowledged that the report was a pleasure to read. The Member was very supportive of the wildflower initiative and as Mayor would be pleased to provide any help and support, to promote this.

A Member noted a recent site visit about another issue, where a resident took a keen interest in plants and said on a stretch of verge, in the past, there had been rare orchids. He asked, if they were there in a couple of month’s time, would that be something that the biodiversity team would be interested in.

The Ecologist explained that in terms of verge management, there was a need to consider those verges where wildflowers could be left safely, but they would look into this to see if the Orchids could be left. The Member agreed to provide the Ecologist with the location.

Members RESOLVED to note the content of the report and support the direction of biodiversity action and delivery identified in the report and the proposal that, in future, regular progress updates are reported to the Committee.