Prevention

• Consider all alternative activities / locations to prevent damage.
• Retain key areas (important habitat, corridors, stepping stones within the development ‘footprint’.
• Ensure continued provision of public access/enjoyment.
• Implement schemes to protect features during construction/operation.

Reduction

• Implement habitat repair and species restoration.
• Translocation of species that will otherwise be seriously affected (very much a final option).
• Install effective source management (e.g. for pollution emissions).
• Create buffer areas around key features.

Offsetting

• Restore and enhance of features as near to the site as possible (conditions, section 106 agreements).
• Undertake habitat creation to replace lost features.
• Install new artificial wildlife features (e.g. badger setts, nest boxes).
• Impose compensation measures to provide new corridors, stepping stones.
• Impose compensation measures to meet Biodiversity Action Plans (BAP) targets.

Where conflict between development and biodiversity is unavoidable (e.g. where a development is of over-riding public interest, there are no alternative sites and the effects cannot be mitigated).

Loss should be compensated for by:

• Direct re-creation of similar quantity and quality of feature loss.
• Where like for like is not possible, compensation should be achieved by recreating much larger areas of lower quality habitat.

• Restore and enhance of features as near to or within the site as possible.
• Use habitat creation and species recovery methods to provide additional features of interest.
• Introduce new artificial wildlife features (e.g. badger sets, nest boxes).
• Provide new public access/enjoyment.