STROLLING through the wonderful County Wildlife Site alongside Lime Kiln Way in Harnham at the weekend, it was heartbreaking to think that a swathe of it might soon disappear under concrete.

The doctors who want to build a whopping great three-storey surgery there, with 250 parking spaces, are confident that they can ‘translocate’ any creatures rendered homeless.

I wonder whether they realise what they’re committing themselves to in terms of time, expertise and money.

This peaceful plot accommodates breeding yellowhammers and linnets, both ‘red list’ endangered species.

Other birds found there include endangered corn buntings as well as common and lesser whitethroat.

It boasts 17 types of butterfly, two kinds of orchid, and some ecologically important anthills.

According to the British Trust for Ornithology, breeding farmland bird numbers have plummeted by 54 per cent since 1970. And according to the Lawton Report – an official review, welcomed by the government and now guiding the thinking of organisations such as the National Trust – what we need are bigger, better, and more joined up wildlife areas.

In other words, we don’t need to be nibbling away at the edges of the ones we already have. As the GPs see it, all they’re asking for is somewhere to provide a piece of essential infrastructure for a city that looks set to expand ad infinitum.

I accept that they don’t feel they have much choice, because no private owner will flog them any land.

All the green spaces encircling our city appear to be in the hands of individuals licking their lips in anticipation of planning permission for lucrative high-density housing estates. Perhaps this is a point at which Wiltshire Council, our planning authority with responsibility for public health, could get involved? It’s always looking for existence-justifying things to poke its nose into, such as trying to sabotage the successful merger between the Wiltshire and Dorset fire services.

Here’s one way it could make itself genuinely useful – by facilitating the search for a less sensitive site, perhaps one of the vacant plots it has designated for employment use.

Come to think of it, Lime Kiln Way is so close to the hospital that the GPs might as well move right out there. It’s equally accessible by car or bus. Unless they really meant it when they said the hospital might close.

I’ll finish up with a sobering fact taken from the State of Nature report, a sort of stocktake of wildlife, issued last week by 53 leading conservation bodies.

A tenth of all British species of wildlife are in danger of extinction.

Intensive farming, urbanisation and climate change have all wrought incalculable damage and are continuing to do so.

The blessed Sir David Attenborough prefaced the report by saying: “The natural world is in serious trouble and it needs our help as never before. We continue to lose the precious wildlife that enriches our lives and is essential to the health and wellbeing of those who live in the UK.”

Health and wellbeing. Isn’t that what all this is about?

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