If Boeing ruled the skies
The hunting marsh harrier must achieve one of the slowest flight speeds of any bird, relative to its size and power.
A Boeing 737 is a great deal quicker, spews out a heck of a lot more detritus than the odd poop from a passing bird of prey and is noisier too.
It is true that some birds – great tits are one example - have changed their songs so they can be heard above the din of traffic by partners and rivals. Others, like black-throated blue warblers in the US, use the songs of fellow birds to guide their choice of nesting sites.
None of these birds would learn much from the roar of a 120-seater airliner. But this is the challenge many thousands will face if a ludicrously large airport is built on Kent’s Romney Marsh.
The decision on Sheikh Fahad al Athel’s plans to enlarge Lydd airport to cater for 500,000 rather than 5,000 people has stalled. Shepway District Council was due to rule in January and then in April but its members slunk off for a quiet re-think when a large bill loomed if they based their decision on Lydd’s shoddy environmental assurances.
But a new player has entered the field with the imminent creation of an independent panel to rule on applications for new airports, bypasses, power stations and tidal barrages.
This government quango may come too late for the decision on Lydd but, given the time the airport has taken to fulfil its application requirements, and the number of times Shepway council has delayed, this Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) could be up and running when decision-time finally comes around.
There are many problems with development at Lydd. Transport links are poor – there is one road and no rail for miles; the thousands of extra flights would increase greenhouse gas emissions just as the government plans to cut them; and it lies right next to the RSPB’s Dungeness nature reserve, where plans for improvements might have to be scrapped if Lydd’s application is successful.
In a funny sort of way, Dungeness is one of the most vibrant reserves we have. It doesn't boast the raucous and spectacular colonies of seabirds, webcams on osprey nests, thousand-strong wader roosts or dawn invasions of pink-footed geese.
But it does host bird, insect and plantlife rarely found elsewhere, including the toadflax brocade moth, the medicinal leach and Britain’s largest population of the Jersey cudweed, a plant classified as critically endangered.
And its wide expanse of shingle stretching around Dungeness point and north towards Folkestone is unique in the UK.
In spring and summer, that shingle comes alive with colour. The slender stems of vipers bugloss, thrift and sea campion fare equally well in the gusty onslaught from the sea. Likewise, yellow horned poppy and sea kale thrive not just because the sea air suits them but because their end-of-the-world solitude spares them the trampling of many a careless foot.
For Dungeness is empty and silent bar the cries of birds and buzz of bees, the smattering of human settlements and the chug of a toy train ferrying the point’s sparse collection of tourists.
That would all change if the Sheikh’s aviation plaything were allowed to become anything more. It would be a wilderness lost, a one in a million place desecrated without justification or reparation.
One of the major consequences of building a big new Lydd airport could be to scupper hopes for Dungeness. That could mean scrapping plans to extend the reserve east to incorporate little used quarry pits. It could also end hopes of creating an aquatic passage along which eels and their young could reach and return from breeding grounds at sea.
Young eels are amongst the favourite foods of the bittern, a rare and elusive heron that seeks sanctuary at Dungeness in winter but has yet to nest. Full grown eels are plentiful in the reserve’s deep pools but are now too large for the bittern’s dinner plate. Their younger, smaller relatives are the perfect fit.
Dungeness this year is doing better than ever. There are 50 pairs of nesting Cetti’s warbler compared to just one in 2003. A rare colony of tree sparrows has set up home at the reserve and there are eight pairs of bearded tits, a higher number than ever before.
The gulls and terns have moved on to other breeding sites but will be back in their thousands in winter. The marsh harriers look set to stay though. A pair nested for the first time in 2007 and two pairs have done so this year.
John Healey, the Minister for Local Government, tells Times readers today that the planning legislation creating the IPC will increase public and parliamentary scrutiny of development decisions despite the removal of ministerial responsibility.
Kent doesn’t need another airport no matter what speed permission can be bulldozed through. If we are serious about tackling climate change, and about keeping just a few special places safe from environmental ruin, it is the marsh harrier not the Boeing jet that should rule the skies of Romney Marsh.
Read more about Dungeness here
And here for the threats posed by a new Lydd airport
John Healey's letter is here