Surfbirds News

The Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) on Monday (October 1) publishes its assessment of a Severn barrage and other proposals to harness tidal energy. A barrage would damage areas protected by international, European and UK law because of their value to birds and other wildlife.

Dunlin, internationally important numbers depend on the Severn © Peter Beesley

The RSPB has set seven tests it believes the SDC must address in writing its report:

· It must acknowledge the Severn estuary’s importance to wildlife and its extensive legal protection;

· Accept the legal requirement to establish that there no alternative to a barrage and that there is over-riding public interest in building it;

· Then recognise the legal requirement that thousands of acres of compensatory habitat would need to be created – a scale never undertaken in the UK before;

· Consider other options for harnessing the Severn’s tidal power such as tidal stream;

· Accept that barrage construction will generate huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions for many years before it generates energy;

· Assess whether the money spent on a barrage would be better spent on other clean technologies and other measures such as cleaner cars to cut emissions;

· Confirm that any development on the Severn would not be dependent on public subsidy.

Dr Mark Avery, the RSPB’s Conservation Director, said: “Tackling climate change is hugely important but this can be done without destroying irreplaceable national treasures like the Severn estuary.

“We should be harnessing the power of the Severn but there are better ways of doing this than by hauling ten miles of concrete into the estuary.

“The government should be aiming to help, not destroy, wildlife and that applies to proposals for green energy schemes just as much as new supermarkets or housing estates.”

The RSPB has called on the Commission to ensure its advice on Monday is impartial and that its members are not swayed by political pressure to favour one energy scheme over another.

Dr Avery said: “The SDC report must recognise the international importance of the estuary and fully consider the legal implications of barrage construction. Huge amounts of new habitat will have to be created if the wildlife havens fashioned by the Severn’s tidal range are lost.

“It took eleven years to replace 110 hectares of mudflats destroyed at Lappel Bank on the Medway, when the government last broke European law. Damage on the Severn would be ten, twenty or thirty times as great. Other land is being lost to sea level rise so replicating Severn habitats would be enormously difficult.”

Notes

The Severn Estuary is a Ramsar wetland site under international law and a Special Protection Area under European law. The government recently agreed to designate the region a Special Area of Conservation because of its importance to lamprey fish. There are a number of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in and on the banks of the estuary, all protected by UK law.

The Severn’s 45-foot tidal range is the second largest in the world behind the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. Mudflats, saltmarsh and rocky islands created by outgoing tides provide food for 65,000 birds in winter including internationally important numbers of Bewick’s swan, pintail duck, shelduck, curlew, dunlin and redshank.

A barrage would cut the Severn’s tidal range by half reducing the amount of land and food for wildlife. Some birds would starve and others would be too malnourished to breed.

Wild salmon swim from the North Sea into the Severn and up the River Wye to spawn. The barrage turbines would kill these fish. Young eels are born in the Atlantic and follow their parents back to the Severn Estuary and upriver to feed.

In 1995, the European Court of Justice ruled that the government should have included Lappel Bank, on the Medway in Kent, in a new Special Protection Area safeguarded by EU law. By that time, however, the site had been turned into a car park. The government was ordered to create compensatory habitat which it did on the Essex coast last year, 11 years after the SPA was created.