§ Mr. Dalyellasked the Secretary of State for the Environment (1) if he will list the sites of special scientific interest in England and Wales which have been damaged or destroyed since 1981; and if he will give details of the type of damaging development and the acreage of each site which has lost its special nature conservation interest;
(2) if he will list all those sites of special scientific interest whose boundaries have been revised downwards as a result of damaging developments since 1970, give details of the amount of land of special nature conservation interest lost to each site, and specify the type of damaging activity and the month and the year in which it occurred;
(3) if he will list all sites of special scientifc interest in England and Wales by name and grid reference and by area and habitat, county by county.
§ Mr. WaldegraveI am arranging to send the hon. Member and to place in the Library lists of all SSSIs in England and Wales. I regret that the remainder of the information is not readily available, but I shall write to the hon. Member. I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) on 1 May at columns 113–14. [Vol. 59: Cols. 113–114].
§ Mr. Dalyellasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list all those areas notified by the Nature Conservancy Council as proposed sites of special scientific interest in England, Scotland and Wales which have been damaged or destroyed since 1981; and if he will 37W give details of the damaging development and the acreage of each site which was lost and its special nature conservation interest.
§ Mr. WaldegraveI am advised by the Nature Conservancy Council that the following 11 proposed sites of special scientific interest were either damaged or
Site Damaging Development Acreage Habitat Ripon Parks, North Yorkshire —Rotovation 51.5 Running water/river banks, scrub, woodland marsh and ponds, permanent pasture and calcareous grassland Jeffry Bog, North Yorkshire —Ditch Clearance and Hedge removal 1.9 Neutral grassland and wet alder woodland Kingsthorpe Scrub field, Northants —Ploughing and bulldozing 11.65 Rough grassland situated on outcrop of limestone Gillett's Meadow, (Yardley Hastings) Northants —Ploughing 3.24 Unimproved herb-rich neutral grassland Radmore Farm, Marsh, Northants —Drainage and Reseeding 3 Marshy grassland reed bed and marshy grassland combined Black Mountains, Hereford and Worcester —Ploughing 12.3 Unimproved permanent pasture and hay meadow and upland moorland Rhos Derlwyn-Fawr, Dyfed —Ploughing 7 Valley-mire with associated herb-rich wet meadow, poor fen and marsh communities Comins Capel-Betws-Dyfed —Burning and Rotovation 4 Complex of acidic heath unimproved neutral grassland and marsh Gwyneunydd Hafod-wen-Powys —Ploughing 6 Unimproved herb-rich hill pasture Torrs Warren, Wigtown, Dumfries and Galloway —Bulldozing 26.3 Coastal Sand Dalbeath Marsh, Dumfermline —Dumping 1.98 Freshwater Marsh, basing mire a herb-rich meadow poor fen, willow carr and fen meadow
§ Mr. Dalyellasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list those sites of special scientific interest where damaging operations are believed to have continued during the time between the Nature Conservancy Council's first application for a nature conservation order under section 29 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act and the granting of that order by his Department.
§ Mr. WaldegraveNo such damage has occurred to notified sites of special scientific interest. However, the following areas, which had not at the time been proposed as SSSIs, were damaged during the period between the application for, and the making of, an order under section 29 of the Act:
Tealham and Tadham moors Somerset Sandford heath Dorset