When Did We Stop Expecting Nature to Come First?

Four years ago, a handful of neighbours came together to question a housing development in Drumbeg. They never imagined the journey would lead them into ecology, planning law and environmental policy. Yet perhaps the greatest lesson has been this: protecting biodiversity should not depend on ordinary residents asking the difficult questions.

There is a moment in the Lagan Valley, usually just before dusk, when the landscape seems to settle. The traffic fades, the starlings gather for an evening singsong, bats begin tracing invisible routes above the hedgerows and, if you’re lucky, an owl calls somewhere beyond the fields. It is easy to take these moments for granted because they feel permanent, as though they have always existed and always will. But they survive because the landscape that supports them has remained largely connected, dark and undisturbed. The hedgerows, mature trees, streams and old field boundaries are not simply attractive features. Together they form a living network that has evolved over centuries.

When the Quarterlands Group first came together in January 2022, none of us imagined we would spend the next four years learning about wastewater treatment capacity, biodiversity policy, planning legislation, historical mapping and ecological surveys. Like most people, we assumed that these were the very things the planning process already examined before major decisions were made. We thought our role would simply be to understand a proposal that affected our community. Instead, each answer to our enquiries has generated another question, and each question led us deeper into subjects that few of us had ever expected to study.

It has been an extraordinary education, but not one we ever intended to undertake.

Now, as proposals emerge for a holiday village next door in Drumbeg, we find ourselves recognising a familiar pattern. The developments are different, but the questions remain remarkably similar. How much development can this landscape absorb before it loses the very qualities that led to its protection? At what point does incremental change cease to be incremental? And perhaps most importantly, who should be asking those questions?

When we eventually sat down and read the Local Development Plan 2032 for ourselves, we expected broad aspirations and carefully chosen language. Instead, we found something much stronger.

The Council’s own policy states:

“Planning permission for new development within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) will only be granted where it is of an appropriate design, size and scale for the locality.”

That is not an aspiration. It is a planning test.

The document goes on to require that development respects traditional boundaries, hedgerows, trees and the special character of the landscape. Reading those words, it becomes difficult not to ask whether every proposal coming forward in Drumbeg is genuinely beginning from that position.

As we continued reading, another passage stopped us in our tracks. It wasn’t buried in technical guidance or hidden in an appendix. It was the Council’s own description of why the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty matters.

“The quality, character and heritage value of the landscape of an AONB lies in their tranquillity, cultural associations, distinctiveness, conservation interest, visual appeal and amenity value.”

Tranquillity.

It is a word that rarely appears in planning debates, yet here it sits at the very heart of the Local Development Plan. It reminds us that protecting this landscape is about far more than ensuring new buildings are attractive. Tranquillity can be altered by lighting, by traffic, by visitor activity, by roads, by noise and by the gradual accumulation of development that changes how a place feels long before it changes how it looks.

The Plan is equally clear about biodiversity. It does not suggest wildlife matters only inside designated reserves. Instead, it recognises that habitats, species and the connections between them are fundamental to the landscape itself.

“Planning permission will only be granted for a development proposal which is not likely to result in the unacceptable adverse impact on, or damage to…” priority habitats, priority species, ancient woodland, wetlands, river corridors and “…features of the landscape which are of major importance for wild flora and fauna.”

That last phrase deserves to be read twice.

“Features of the landscape which are of major importance for wild flora and fauna.”

That reflects exactly what many local people have observed over the last four years. Residents have recorded bats, badgers, hedgehogs, woodpeckers, barn owls and, more recently, hummingbird hawk-moths and many other creatures in and around the Quarterlands site. We have been recording with photos and videos and this recording is worthless to the planning authorities. None of those species recognise the neat red boundary lines that appear on planning drawings. They move through our gardens, across fields and along centuries-old hedgerows that have shaped this landscape for generations. Nature simply does not organise itself according to planning application boundaries.

The Local Development Plan even anticipates uncertainty. Where evidence suggests protected species may be present, it states that:

“Steps must be taken to establish whether it is present…” before the likely impacts are considered.

Again, those words matter because they place the emphasis on understanding first and deciding later.

That is why it has become increasingly difficult to see the Quarterlands development, the boutique hotel, bob stewarts redevelopment, industrial poultry farm and the proposed holiday village as entirely separate conversations. They are separate planning applications, but together they raise a wider question about the future of Drumbeg in the heart of the Lagan Valley Regional Park. If every proposal is assessed on its own, without considering the gradual accumulation of roads, lighting, parking areas, visitor activity and catastrophic habitat fragmentation, then the landscape changes almost imperceptibly until one day we realise we are energetically protecting something that no longer exists.

Ironically, the Local Development Plan anticipated that concern too. It states that:

“…in assessing proposals, including cumulative impacts in such areas, account will be taken…”

The cumulative impact of development is not an invention of campaign groups. It is a principle embedded within the Council’s own planning framework.

Perhaps our greatest concern after four years is not any individual planning application. It is the feeling that biodiversity too often enters the conversation only after local residents begin asking questions. Again and again it has seemed that members of the community identify inconsistencies, request further information, scrutinise ecological reports or uncover additional evidence before environmental issues receive the detailed attention they deserve. That is not a criticism of individual planners or consultees, many of whom work within an immensely complex system. Rather, it raises a broader question about the culture of planning itself. Should biodiversity be something that communities repeatedly have to defend, or should it already be the foundation upon which decisions are built?

For us, the answer feels obvious.

The Quarterlands campaign has never really been about becoming experts in planning.

It has been about asking whether the principles already written into the Local Development Plan are being applied with the care they deserve.

The greatest irony of the last four years is that the developments threatening this landscape have also taught many of us to appreciate it more deeply than ever before. We notice the old hedgerows now. We notice the wildlife corridors. We notice the quietness that settles over the valley at dusk. We notice the intricate relationship between fields, trees, streams and species that together create the character of this remarkable place.

Once you begin to see the landscape in that way, protecting it no longer feels like resisting change.

It simply feels like keeping a promise already made.

*Woodpecker Photos from Hidden Huntley LVRP AONB