Why Sparrows Need Hedges

The House Sparrow, the Greater London Assembly and Me…

If you’ve read the article about my attendance at the National House Sparrow Conference, held at City Hall last February, you will know I enjoyed an excellent day. However, there was one occurrence that summed up why the sparrow needs all the friends it can get….

Being an ‘unknown’ person there, representing myself and sporting the hastily hand written name tag, it was up to me to make conversation with the various delegates, which I did. The only people to come and talk to me were two from the GLA itself; the very organisation who invited me. Great you might think, but the conversation that ensued was weird to say the least. I felt I was being dictated to.

To sum up, I got the impression I was being told: …what you’ve written Mr Lyven is all very interesting, but you’re not a professional in these matters, and there are a lot of experts working to sort out this problem, so run along and leave us to get on with it and stop meddling in a subject you so clearly know little about…

Days later, I started to reflect that maybe I was wrong thinking this; until a letter arrived from the GLA confirming my initial reaction, as it adopted a similar condescending tone. see GLA letter here

Whilst I don’t wish to tread on anyone’s toes regarding sparrow loss, unfortunately it’s the house sparrows I care about most, so if people feel their tootsies getting crushed, I’m sorry. I wish they’d think more about the house sparrows’ immediate plight and take action rather than worry about their own agenda.

I feel sorry London’s sparrows’ don’t have a more dedicated authorative team fighting their corner and giving them and their vital habitat the protection they deserve. Indiscriminate front garden removal should be made illegal London-wide, with strict planning laws enforced. If a front garden is to be allowed for parking, then stringent guidelines should be adhered to as regards mitigating the greenery loss.

Some home owners have made careful provision of ground for planting even though they park their cars off-road. The average car tyre must only be about seven inches across. Driveways could consist of two strips of concrete, about fourteen inches wide, giving even the worse drivers a chance to park successfully, leaving plenty of ground for grass and plants elsewhere. Hedges should be encouraged between and bordering properties.

It is utterly absurd for the London Biodiversity Partnership to state they hope to understand the sparrow problem by the year 2010! Surely they should use the precautionary principle and legislate now against avoidable habitat loss.

Those able at the GLA should be giving top priority to decreasing the amount of the unnecessary concreting of London, also endeavouring to reduce the growing amount of water run-off from people’s property that contributes to flash flooding, and ultimately causing fish to die in the Thames, each time we get bouts of heavy rain.

The proposed Olympic development at Hackney & Stratford in East London for 2012 will remove vast areas of current wild green spaces and old buildings; replacing them with a concrete and manicured green spaced wilderness; hardly conducive to nurturing London’s natural wildlife. To see bulldozers moving in during the Athens Olympics, as if to say, …look at us everybody, we’re so eager for the Olympics in eight years time, we’re happy to destroy wild habitat now at any cost… was extremely upsetting.

Each time ground is built over, potential sparrow habitat is lost. Already in Edgware, north London, two small streams that run through it are having Łmillions spent, providing contained flood plains on parkland alongside, to prevent flooding further downstream during heavy rain. So many front gardens have been eradicated in the area for car-parking, vast quantities of extra water are deposited into drains and flow into these once placid waterways.

London’s average summer temperature will continue to rise unless a concerted effort is made to green over much of what’s being lost. Tokyo has already set percentage targets of green areas on all new developments in their city, in an attempt to halt temperature rise and improve air-quality.

Hopefully, roof gardens will become a statutory part of proposed new developments in London, with similar attention paid to keeping temperatures down by greening large car parks and buildings etc., by providing more trees and gardens. This action will provide more food for birds as well as producing a healthier city.

Those in charge could legislate green planning laws now, but are dragging their feet, as they are on preventing house sparrow decline.

Until those in the GLA’s London Biodiversity Partnership pull their collective fingers out and state the obvious about widespread habitat destruction and make restorative and new legislation, house sparrows and other vulnerable wildlife species will continue to be systematically eradicated from London.

Bad deeds happen when good people do nothing…