16.1.3
Additional Mitigation Pre-construction
202
Measures would be undertaken to minimise the likelihood of disturbance injury or mortality of nesting birds, their eggs and chicks. Wherever possible, vegetation which would be directly impacted by construction and that could be used by nesting birds would be removed outside of the March-July bird nesting season (particularly sections of hedgerow, scrub, tree lines and woodland) although good practice would be to remove any vegetation outside of February to August to avoid early or late breeding attempts when in agreement with the Ecological Mitigation Plan for the Deben Estuary SPA non-breeding birds and Schedule 1 breeding birds (Appendix 4).
203
At locations where scrub, tree or woodland removal during the breeding season is unavoidable, surveys would be undertaken immediately prior to habitat removal to confirm that there are no occupied nests.
204
If complete removal of the trees, shrubs and vegetation is not feasible, then they should be heavily pruned to reduce the amount of nesting cover for breeding birds where compliant with other mitigation measures.
205
Artificial deterrents such as decoy predators, auditory scarers (e.g. gas cannons) and visual scarers (e.g. reflective ribbons) have limited success at deterring nesting birds; as over a period of time birds can become habituated to the deterrent.
206
Should any occupied nests be identified during the pre construction survey, an appropriate buffer zone (determined on the basis of the species concerned and the location of the nest in the context of the surrounding vegetation, but no less than 5 m) would be retained until it can be ascertained that the chicks have fledged.
During Construction 207
If an active nest is identified during the works, it must be protected until the young have fledged. Works in the area should halt and a suitably qualified ecologist (ECoW) should be contacted to advice on appropriate mitigation. This might involve retaining a buffer zone around the nest of 5-25 m dependent on the species (Schedule 1 species would need a separate plan due to variation in disturbance distances) involved and the location of the nest. It is not possible to give specific distances per species, as this is site specific. For example, a
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