Background
Network Rail owns, operates and develops Britain’s railway infrastructure, managing 32,000 km of track and adjacent habitats, as well as many bridges, tunnels and stations. Network Rail is one of Britain’s largest landowners, and is committed to enhancing biodiversity across its estate, balancing its commitment to safety and performance with a responsibility for lineside wildlife and habitats.
Scope of services
RSK Wilding produced a biodiversity offsetting strategy for Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd (NRIL) to explore how the biodiversity impacts associated with their operational activities and major projects can be addressed strategically.
We outlined how NRIL could efficiently:
- Identify and quantify the baseline biodiversity conditions within their 52,000 ha estate.
- Measure impacts on biodiversity that result from their broad range of activities.
- Identify the likely biodiversity offsetting requirements
to deliver firstly no net loss to biodiversity and subsequently an overall biodiversity net gain. - Work with third parties and stakeholders to identify wider opportunities for biodiversity offsetting.
Various opportunities for delivering biodiversity offsets were explored, including:
- Habitat enhancement and creation within the footprint of proposed schemes and development.
- Offsetting within Network Rail land near to where impacts on biodiversity are occurring or will occur.
- Purchasing biodiversity credits from other third party offset providers.
- Acquiring third party land for the purpose of biodiversity offsetting.
Our strategy demonstrated how such opportunities for biodiversity creation and enhancement could not only offset the company’s biodiversity impacts but also have the potential to provide other natural capital benefits (e.g. carbon offsetting, flood risk mitigation, community access etc.) and also generate new income streams for Network Rail.
Impact
Our technical advice provided Network Rail Infrastructure Limited with a strategic and consistent approach to understanding their baseline biodiversity, mitigation activities and delivery of improvements to biodiversity across their estate and future projects.