Badger Trust Calls on MPs to Support Amendment 130 to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.
- Badger Trust Staff Team
- 23 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Badger Trust urges MPs to back Amendment 130 to protect badgers and ensure responsible, evidence-based environmental planning.
Badger Trust urgently calls on all MPs to support Amendment 130 to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, not only for the sake of our natural environment, but also in the interests of developers, the police, your constituents, and your already overloaded inboxes.
What’s at stake
Without Amendment 130, the Bill explicitly removes the requirement for developers to conduct pre-development ecological surveys for any species, within areas covered by Environmental Delivery Plans (EDPs).
This change weakens the Protection of Badgers Act, allowing badgers to be killed to make room for development. Because it remains a separate criminal offence to cause unnecessary suffering to a sentient animal, badgers will be killed in accordance with DEFRA’s guidance on humane despatch. i.e. in practice, by shooting.
That’s right: contracted shooters could soon be operating in your constituency, and according to the Minister, developers will be paying for them.
We suspect the Government hasn’t mentioned that to you.
Concerns from law enforcement
The police officers serving on the Wildlife LINK Wildlife Crime Group have formally written to DEFRA to raise their concerns about the Bill. Police officers warn that it will make their jobs harder and increase the financial incentives for wildlife crime.
We suspect you haven’t been told about that correspondence either, and you wouldn’t know, because it counts as “advice,” which DEFRA is not required to disclose during the passage of a Bill.
Why Amendment 130 matters
Amendment 130 is crucial to ensure that Environmental Delivery Plans (EDPs) and the Nature Recovery Fund (NRF) do not become tools that harm badgers and other protected wildlife.
There is no evidence that the measures proposed in the Bill will achieve a net benefit for nature, which is why the Minister’s assurances are phrased as “we believe” rather than “we know.”
It’s not just badgers
Other at-risk species include: hedgehogs, hares, kingfishers, water voles, otters, dormice, deer, red squirrels, beavers, nightingales, turtle doves, and many more.
The Government’s plan to use the new mechanisms in the Bill to manage impacts on protected species lacks scientific and ecological credibility, as well as the detail needed to assess whether these mechanisms qualify as genuine “plans”, or mere hopes.
In part, because their amendments were given at the last moment, reluctantly and with no time for development, let alone scrutiny, it has been ‘take or leave it’ all the way through. Or to be precise and quote from the Ministerial meeting with the big eNGOs, “if you don’t accept these amendments, there will be nothing else on offer ….. and we will not speak up for you for the rest of our term in office”
Currently, the only example used to support the Government's fairytale approach pertains to a single species [Great Crested Newts] for which a tailored, robust, and established system already exists, one that is now in jeopardy, ironically. Let GCN die here, and in exchange, the developer funds the creation of ponds elsewhere, which will be home to other GCN.
And while the quiet removal of newts may go unnoticed, the visible killing of badgers on people’s doorsteps will not.
Nature is the solution – Not the scapegoat.
Natural England recognises the shared Government goal of streamlining planning processes and delivering necessary infrastructure. Still, it acknowledges that planning reform must not come at the expense of species protection or legal nature recovery commitments.
We agree and ask: why not tackle the real obstacles to development instead?
Those include:
the shortage of skilled labour,
the rising cost of materials,
housing market inefficiencies & drip feed supply in high-demand areas,
outdated sewage infrastructure, and
the chronic lack of genuinely affordable homes.
Addressing these issues would do far more to unblock the housing market, stimulate infrastructure investment, and support communities than dismantling environmental safeguards ever could.
A better way forward
With Amendment 130, Environmental Delivery Plans (EDPs) and the Nature Recovery Fund (NRF) can still be used effectively to address landscape-scale challenges, such as diffuse pollution, where strategic interventions provide clear public benefit.
However, applying these tools to the licensing of impacts on individual, legally protected species would undermine their purpose, introducing unacceptable risk into a system that relies on clarity, integrity, and confidence from both regulators and the private sector.
Without Amendment 130, the NRF risks becoming the “Nature Removal Fund”, hardly a label any Government would want.
Our message to MPs
Partial safeguards or half measures will not resolve these risks; they will only increase uncertainty and potential for misuse. A clearly delineated approach is essential: species protection licensing must remain within the established framework, which means passing Amendment 130 in full.
This is the only approach consistent with the Environment Act, the Global Biodiversity Framework, the Bern Convention, the Wildlife and Countryside Act, and the Protection of Badgers Act.
By backing Amendment 130, MPs can:
Ensure a planning system that is efficient, responsible, and legally sound;
Support sustainable development and investor confidence; and
Safeguard the restoration of our natural world.
Passing Amendment 130 will protect species from unnecessary harm and prevent a scenario in which paid shooters are killing badgers in constituents’ neighbourhoods, a headline no one wants to see, and a policy that is neither acceptable nor economically beneficial.
Support Amendment 130. Protect badgers. Protect the law. Protect nature.
Take Action
Tell your MP to support Amendment 130 today!
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