Chapter 2: Strategic Aims

Transport Scotland must ensure its own policies and programmes align with the various national plans and strategies relating to biodiversity, and specifically with the new Scottish Biodiversity Strategy (SBS). Achieving these targets will be challenging particularly the main objectives for the nation to be nature-positive by 2030, and to have restored and regenerated biodiversity by 2045.

The Strategy also needs to ensure that biodiversity considerations are embedded across the agency’s activities and decision making. An introduction to each of the four Strategic Aims is provided below. Taken together, these will assist in delivering Transport Scotland’s Biodiversity Duty and its contribution to the national nature-positive targets.

Strategic Aim 1: Reduce rates of ecosystem loss and degradation

NPF4 requires new developments to deliver positive effects for biodiversity, ensuring the environment is left in a demonstrably better state than before. The activities of Transport Scotland must seek to reduce the degradation and loss of natural habitats and systems. Infrastructure projects generally lead to the loss or reduction of habitats caused, for instance by land-take, pollution, and general environmental disturbance. This can affect the ability of a habitat to provide services such as food, water, and shelter for animals, making it harder for species to survive and generally reducing biodiversity viability. Reducing rates of loss and degradation will help Transport Scotland fulfil its Biodiversity Duty and support the Scottish Government’s aims for Scotland to be Nature Positive by 2030. Positive effects for biodiversity will be measured using the forthcoming Scottish biodiversity metric expected to be in place in 2027.

Strategic Aim 2: Protect, restore, and enhance natural ecosystems

Protecting and restoring natural ecosystems will involve conserving intact natural habitats and implementing actions such as habitat restoration, pollution reduction, and the removal of invasive non-native species, and wherever possible avoiding their colonisation in the first place. Effectively managing areas adjacent to designated sites will help protect those sites and potentially expand natural ecosystems and the services they provide. In addition, site and ecosystem resilience will be increased, helping to maintain the ecosystem’s capacity to maintain its essential functions. This will help Transport Scotland fulfil its Biodiversity Duty and support the Scottish Government’s aims for Scotland to be Nature Positive by 2030, and to have restored and regenerated biodiversity across the country by 2045.

Strategic Aim 3: Increase landscape connectivity

Landscapes can facilitate or impede the movement of organisms and ecological processes between habitat patches. Preserving or creating this connectivity is an important strategy in protecting biodiversity and maintaining viable ecosystems. The barrier effect created by much of the Transport Scotland infrastructure impedes this connectivity. Large infrastructure schemes will often have a requirement for wildlife permeability/landscape connectivity built into them, but much of the legacy infrastructure will not so retrospective improvements should be made where possible through modifications or maintenance activities. Improving and maximising this connectivity within and beyond the Transport Scotland estate will assist in increasing the resilience of ecosystems to climate change or other perturbations.

Strategic Aim 4: Avoid approaches that have negative outcomes for ecosystems and biodiversity

New construction projects or modification to existing transport infrastructure have the potential to cause negative outcomes for biodiversity, for example through habitat loss and severance. Whilst significant schemes are typically subject to environmental impact assessment, which looks at how ecological impacts can be mitigated, design efforts must be focussed on avoiding adverse impact altogether wherever possible. Furthermore, in addition to mitigating specific predicted impacts, designs must be future proofed in anticipation of possible future trends, providing opportunities for biodiversity to thrive in the long term and enhancements to achieve positive effects for biodiversity.

Maintenance and management approaches, often involving intensive ‘blanket’ management or chemical applications, can degrade ecosystems, removing habitats and disrupting wildlife lifecycles. Indiscriminate or frequent mowing can destroy wildflower habitats before native plants set seed and increases foraging wildlife mortality, as well as removing shelter and food sources for insects and small mammals. Spraying of herbicides reduces plant diversity, typically removing broad-leaved species that provide a food source to pollinators and introducing toxins into adjacent soil and water.

Removal or aggressive pruning of trees, hedgerows and scrub or removing deadwood can significantly reduce the carrying capacity of local ecosystems. We will continue to review the ways in which we manage the transport estate to avoid such negative effects on biodiversity.

Climate change significantly affects biodiversity by altering ecosystems and having such effects as habitat loss and increased ecosystem stress which can lead to species destruction and possible extinction. Moreover, measures to counter the more generalised effects of climate change may also indirectly and inadvertently affect biodiversity. Inappropriate afforestation, for example, may negatively impact ecosystems and the species they support. Where Transport Scotland undertakes climate mitigation measures, we will carefully consider and avoid any potential negative impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity. Nature-based solutions are vital to mitigating climate change by harnessing ecosystems to capture, store and help prevent the release of greenhouse gases.