Planning and development

Assessing potential impacts of proposed developments

We have provided model predictions to local conservation groups who would like evidence of how the wildlife they take care of might be affected by proposed developments.

We’ve also shared model predictions with county ecologists to help them assess how species might be using sites and the wider landscape around those sites.

Amph4pop model predictions generated for Smallbrook Toad Patrol.

An Ecological Permissions System

In response to the concerns of Toad Patrollers, we teamed up with Adam Sheppard, an Assistant Professor of urban planning at the University of Birmingham, to examine how Biodiversity Net Gain policies could be improved to better represent the needs of mobile species.

Our recommendation for the creation of a new Ecological Permissions System for both the built and natural environment was published in the Town and Country Planning journal, to raise this idea with planning practitioners, and was taken into parliament in a POSTnote.

Click on the video to find out more about our collaborative work with Adam Sheppard, now Assistant Professor in Urban Planning at the University of Birmingham. This video was made in collaboration with the Royal Town Planning Institute and Content with Purpose, with funding from NERC through the Landscape Decisions Programme, and with thanks to the University of Leicester for hosting us.

Multispecies placemaking

We collaborated again with the University of Birmingham and with Julian Ellerby and George Simons at Wyrd Futures to explore:

approaches to multispecies placemaking
opportunities and barriers to the adoption of multispecies placemaking

with planning practitioners on the University of Birmingham’s Chartered Town Planner Degree Apprenticeship course.

Exploring multispecies placemaking and design with planning practitioners on the University of Birmingham’s Chartered Town Planner Degree Apprenticeship course during a session facilitated by Wyrd Futures and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology as part of the NERC-funded Dynamic Landscapes project. Photographs (c) Wyrd Futures.

The session was part of our Dynamic Landscapes project, funded by NERC through a Growing Shoots Bursary.

‘We stepped into the world of more-than-human planning, where the voices, needs, and movements of all species are considered in shaping space … This wasn’t science fiction – it was a real, urgent practice in empathy, ecology, and systems thinking … It challenges us to rethink “infrastructure” through multispecies eyes—and to build futures that are truly inclusive.’
Apprentice Morgan Hewkin’s reflections on her LinkedIn post after the session