A study has shown that the East West Rail project in Cambridgeshire poses a risk to the longstanding relationship between the community and the local environment.
Barbastelles are one of the rarest bats in Britain and very few breeding locations are known.
Researchers, who interviewed 80 Cambridgeshire residents, found that a community's lived experience of a landscape is just as significant as the technical aspects of assessing the impact of large infrastructure projects, and if this relationship is damaged or broken, it can have lasting consequences.
The Heritage Ecosystem Impact Assessment (HEIA) study argues that heritage ecosystem perspectives should be integrated into future planning decisions or used to design meaningful mitigation strategies to understand the full cost of infrastructure projects.
Participants in the study overwhelmingly viewed the East West Rail project as negative, citing the loss of agricultural landscapes and the erosion of key cultural and ecological relationships.
Heritage ecosystem
The researchers stress, however, that there is still time for East West Rail (EWR) and the community to work together to understand how to protect the heritage ecosystem of the area and factor it into the planning and development process.
The EWR development aims to connect Oxford and Cambridge, with a section of new track impacting a number of villages in south Cambridgeshire. The project has faced criticism from the local community across a number of issues, in particular the impact it will have on water supply, wildlife habitats, and destruction of farmland.
The impact on the endangered barbastelle bats and great crested newts, for example, has caused concern, with Cambridgeshire County Council reporting that the planned development could result in losses to wildlife sites, habitats, and protected species.
The HEIA report, led by researchers at the Universities of York and Cambridge, set out to explore a new way of understanding and evaluating development impacts, drawing on the insights of local communities.
'Emotional' aspects
Dr Tanja Hoffmann, from the University of York's Department of Archaeology, said: "The potential loss of habitat for the critically endangered barbastelle bat is a good example of what we mean by making a region's heritage ecosystem more visible. It is not just about the bat and the threat to its habitat, it is about the relationship people have with it, relationships that span over generations.
"This isn't a one-way relationship either; as much as a community may feel connected to the bats, the bats are also connected to humans. An individual might use bat behaviour to understand the changing environment, or in their storytelling about the local community to young children, but a bat will also rely on humans to navigate their world, such as using a hedgerow that someone has planted to map out their foraging path.
"To a developer, these more 'emotional' aspects might seem small and insignificant, but they are actually hugely important to the planning of any big project. If you start to negatively impact the relationships that people are most invested in, the result is development that affects both the wellbeing of the community and the places they care about.
"The loss or undermining of these relationships has a huge knock-on effect for both local biodiversity and the mental health of residents."
Three components
While environmental impact assessments are part of the planning process for large infrastructure projects such as this, they do not account for the cultural dimensions of affected landscapes.
Dr Dacia Viejo Rose, Director of the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre, said: "The heritage of places is made up of an ecosystem of relationships built over time through practices, shared memories, and familiar sights. These relationships are central to our feeling of belonging, of being at home. In the name of creating new connections this project will be severing many existing ones."
The research highlighted three components of a local heritage ecosystem that they argue should be factored into the planning of the new railway line. The three components - connectivity, legacy, and wellbeing - highlight humans and wildlife's ability to interact with each other and the landscape, transmit ecological knowledge across generations, while highlighting the mental and physical benefits of sustaining relationships with familiar landscapes.
Local identity
Researchers argue that these components are deeply interwoven with landscapes that hold particular importance for local identity, ecology, and community health. The new report documents 43 distinct impacts associated with the East West Rail development, many of which are already being felt by local residents.
The HEIA found that these impacts are highly interlinked and likely to intensify during the planning and construction phases, causing widespread disruption to the valued components of the landscape.
Dr Hoffmann said: "We need to recognise the interconnected relationships between people, places, and species.
"Rather than relying solely on technical metrics, it is important to prioritise the lived experiences and insights of local communities, and those who bear the costs of development are best positioned to evaluate its impacts."
The full report is published online at the Heritage for Global Challenges Research Centre.
