At Green Park Village in Reading, we are committed to creating a net biodiversity gain. Our Lake and green open spaces are already home to a wide range of wildlife and a new Bug Hotel has just been installed to help our local insects to reproduce and hide from adverse weather. They will be able to enjoy the various materials used within the hotel and make the most of the new crawl spaces.
This includes butterflies who like to stay dormant during the winter and need somewhere hidden and dry. Beetles, which make up nearly 25% of all known species on Earth and enjoy rotting wood, leaves, bark and other warm damp places to feed and lay larvae. Solitary bees can benefit from crawl spaces where they can hide from rain and lay their eggs There are hundreds of types of bee in the UK and the majority (90%) are solitary and live without a hive.
With some sites in Europe recording up to 75% less flying insects in the last 30 years, it is important we help our crawly neighbours.
To achieve this, the Berkeley Group committed in May 2017 to creating a net biodiversity gain on all new developments. We have based our methodology on industry leading best practice to ensure that we can measure, implement and monitor net gain on our developments. For further details of our methodology, please see below.
We consider net gain from the early design stages, to make sure that we are retaining and creating the right habitats. To help our design teams achieve this we have developed The Nine Concepts to inform our approach and we work with our ecologists, landscape architects and Local Wildlife Trusts to make this happen.