4 - Impacts of Development on Wildlife Declines

Summary

Urban sprawl has consumed large areas of countryside in Britain, and continues apace in conjunction with associated transport infrastructure. Statutory protection measures aimed at restricting the impacts of urbanisation are in place but are frequently overruled by development decisions. Important wildlife sites with rare species have been lost despite nominal protection. New roads have fragmented wildlife populations and large numbers of some animal species fall victim to traffic death. In some cases, local extinctions have been the result of road deaths. Another consequence of increased urbanisation is a rise in pollution levels, manifest on land, in the air and in the water. Plants, wild animals and humans have all suffered from increased pollution. Air pollutants kill many people annually, and the amount of plastic in marine environments has reached unparalleled proportions. All of these factors clearly relate to the numbers of people living in the UK.