Catch up on the latest environmental news from across the county with Abby Hook.
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00:00 Hello and welcome to Kent on Climate, live on KMTV. I'm Abbey Hook and in this show
00:09 we discuss all things related to environmental issues in the county. How is climate change
00:14 impacting Kent, what are communities in the county doing to tackle it and how can you
00:19 help at home. Each week we take a deep dive into a new environmental issue in the county
00:23 and I'm joined by expert guests.
00:25 Well, first tonight, EULA's is going to cost my business thousands according to a
00:31 Medway businesswoman. Two weeks today some vehicles will have to pay a £12.50 daily
00:36 fee to enter the ultra low emission zone. Will London motorists have access to a scrappage
00:42 scheme? But as Gabriel Morris reports, others in Kent would like to see the same.
00:47 One of the most controversial policies of recent years. Some thought it would never
00:53 happen but last month the High Court ruled EULA lawful. This Medway businesswoman says
00:59 her diesel van she uses for work doesn't meet the emission standards. Around 75% of
01:06 her clients are within the chargeable zone. She says EULA is going to cost her thousands.
01:14 Now it's completely unfair. Now more than ever people are buying out of the area cheaper
01:20 houses and they're travelling into London, they're travelling into the local areas
01:24 and that's what a lot of us are doing because it's so dear.
01:27 Some people watching this might say why don't you go and buy a new van?
01:31 If I go and buy a new van now it's going to cost double the cost of a new van. I've
01:36 been looking and if I want a new van I think 2018 or 19 you're looking about 18 grand
01:43 and at the moment it's just not, with everything going up, it's just not viable to get that.
01:49 This is where the EULA zone will meet the Kent border.
01:53 Now I've been here for 10 minutes seeing which vans are EULA compliant or not. Now
01:58 it's not the most accurate study but I found that 3 out of 10 vans going through the border
02:03 would have to pay £12.50 in two weeks time when EULA comes into force.
02:09 Now we don't know which authority these vans are licensed within. If they are London they'll
02:15 have access to a scrappage scheme of up to £11,500 but for businesses in Kent they don't.
02:24 It's very important that we support our small businesses and I don't think that we should
02:29 be putting them in a position where they are potentially going to suffer real financial
02:36 strain. It's really up to the government to provide the funding.
02:41 The government hasn't confirmed any nationwide scrappage schemes as of yet. But they, alongside
02:47 Kent County Council, says it's unfair on our county's motorists.
02:53 We put this to the Mayor of London. No one was available for interview but we were sent
02:58 this statement.
02:59 "The Mayor has been clear that the decision to expand the ultra-low emission zone London
03:03 wide was not an easy one, but necessary to tackle toxic air pollution. Around 4,000 Londoners
03:10 die prematurely each year due to air pollution."
03:14 EULA is the focus of many businesses at the moment. There's no way around it. They either
03:20 have to buy a compliant van or pay the fee.
03:25 Gabriel Morris for CAME TV.
03:28 That was Gabriel Morris reporting there. Joining me in the studio now is Dr. Julian Spinks,
03:32 our health expert here at CAME TV. I wanted to bring you in Julian to ask you about the
03:37 connection between our health and these ultra-low emission zones and emissions, air pollution
03:43 and what actually that connection is and how likely it is.
03:46 We heard a really damning number there. 4,000 deaths a year. So 4,000 people die prematurely
03:54 due to air pollution. That's in London from the Mayor there. We heard in that statement
03:59 in Gabriel's report. Is that true? Those numbers seem really high.
04:04 It's pretty much in line with the sort of figures that the World Health Organization,
04:09 European bodies and so on have suggested. Of course, people don't sort of die of just
04:14 pollution. Well, those deaths are things like heart disease, lung disease and pollution
04:18 even gets into things like kidneys and livers and so on. And so they're dying of other things,
04:23 but that's the prediction as to the effect of pollution. And it's the combination of
04:29 chemicals, these tiny particulates called PM2.5, which can actually get through your
04:34 lungs and into your bloodstream and into other bits of your body, which are a major cause
04:38 of ill health. And so reducing that will actually reduce both death and ill health amongst people
04:45 with, for example, asthma. How quickly could it reduce sort of these issues
04:50 with health? How quickly are we actually going to see that? Because I don't know, you imagine
04:54 that air pollution takes a while to set in, takes a while to cause these issues and these
04:58 deaths. Would we see it take effect instantly or would it take some time?
05:03 Some of the effect will be very quick. We're very familiar with hay fever and the pollen
05:08 count and the fact that actually when the pollen count's high, then you get more hay
05:11 fever. People with asthma, if the pollution level is high, they're more likely to have
05:16 asthma attacks and so on. So actually dropping it down will have a relatively quick effect,
05:21 but also the long-term effect, because a lot of the long-term ill health is because it
05:26 accumulates in the body. So you're having a long-term effect from short periods of pollution.
05:32 And do you think that certain areas, people are more impacted by the effects of air pollution?
05:38 Would you see in certain areas more people suffering from ill health due to air pollution
05:44 than other areas in Kent? Well, it's very definitely dependent on the
05:48 sort of area you're in and the sort of traffic and so on. So it tends to be that urban areas
05:53 are more affected than rural areas and if there's a lot of traffic, that will make a
05:56 difference. And even in areas where there's lots of electric cars, these micro-particulates
06:01 can come off tyres as well. So even if you're not actually putting it out the exhaust pipe,
06:06 you may still be polluting. And the weather will have an effect as well. So if you have
06:10 a long period of dry weather, then actually the pollution levels will tend to go up. When
06:14 you have rain, it washes the pollution out of the air and back onto the ground.
06:18 So what you said about electric vehicles there, it's quite interesting. The push is to have
06:23 electric to get rid of, that's the whole message behind this, to be more environmentally friendly.
06:28 But if it's causing problems to our health in that sense, could you just expand on what
06:32 you were saying? Yes, definitely they're not as dangerous as
06:35 sort of ordinary cars, petrol and diesel, and particularly the older ones which put
06:40 out an awful lot more particulates and pollution and so on. But they are not entirely free
06:46 of causing pollution because of the fact that when you're driving around, there's tiny bits
06:50 of rubber that are being rubbed off your tyres, which is why every few years you actually
06:53 have to buy new tyres. And that actually adds to this particulate. And rubber is not actually
06:58 a very safe thing if you inhale it. What can we do to protect ourselves? I mean,
07:03 we're seeing EULAs, that's to reduce the cars that are the most polluting vehicles. But
07:09 what can we do, because we're still going to see them around the edges of London here
07:12 in Kent, not so close to that EULAs border. What can we do to protect ourselves from air
07:18 pollution and how can we actually be aware of it because you can't see it?
07:22 It's the big problem. If you look in the 1950s when they had smog, it was really obvious
07:26 you had this dense, choking sort of mixture of fog and smoke. Now you're not going to
07:32 see it and so you almost rely on monitoring. What we can do is use our transport wisely.
07:40 And so if you can use public transport, then you're going to reduce the amount of pollution
07:43 going out. Definitely move away from using the most polluting cars and of course that's
07:48 why there's a scrappage scheme in London. And we may need to consider the same sort
07:52 of thing out in Kent because really this sort of reduction is needed right across the country,
07:58 not just in central London. It's that balancing act I suppose as well.
08:03 Very quickly, we're looking at the environment and then we're looking at health. If we do
08:09 expand this, we're going to – people are concerned, as we heard in Gabriel's report
08:13 there, about their businesses. But then if it's beneficial to the environment and our
08:16 health perhaps, it has to be the way forward?
08:18 Virtually everything we do is there's a balance there and I can see that people are
08:21 being impacted and we have to find a way to mitigate it. But from a long term and a short
08:26 term basis, actually health is so important and in the end it will cost the country more
08:31 money if people are ill.
08:32 Well, thank you Julian for giving us a bit of detail about that. We often talk about
08:36 you Les but we don't see – we talk about it in an environmental sense but it's also
08:39 important to get the health side of it in too. Thank you very much for your time.
08:45 Next Medway Council has announced new plans to transform a disused golf course into a
08:50 public park for locals. The golf course has been permanently closed since April 2018,
08:56 leaving acres of empty green space. The council are encouraging the public to get involved
09:00 in an open consultation, currently ongoing and will close at midnight on Friday 22nd
09:06 September.
09:07 Paul Mariam Yacoub has been speaking with Medway's portfolio holder for climate change
09:11 and strategic regeneration.
09:13 Medway Council have officially announced plans to transform an unused golf course here in
09:17 Deangate Ridge to a lively public park. On Tuesday 29th August Medway Council invites
09:23 local residents here to High Holstow Village Hall to have your say about what exactly is
09:27 going to happen at Deangate Ridge.
09:29 It's really good news in many ways for Medway residents and the residents of Hoo as well.
09:33 Deangate is a popular site, it's been a golf course there for a long, long time and now
09:38 what we're looking at is turning it into a sort of country park facility if we can. And
09:43 that means opening up the access, letting people in, making it a real positive contribution
09:48 to the green space provision for the residents around there.
09:52 Despite government cuts of £170m from the Housing Infrastructure Fund, the council in
09:57 Medway have said they remain committed to deliver environmental improvements on the
10:02 Hoo Peninsula.
10:03 Obviously we recently lost a lot of government funding for the Hoo area which is a real shame
10:08 but what we don't want to do is lose the opportunities of this site and also the Cockham Community
10:12 Park as well as the Hoo Wetlands Scheme as well. We want to try and bring those forward.
10:17 So we're trying our best not to lose those really exciting countryside projects, green
10:23 space projects. So a big part of our effort now is to try and raise the funds for this
10:28 and make it happen as soon as possible.
10:30 As the city of Medway continues to grow and new builds are put in, our green spaces may
10:35 be put more at risk.
10:36 A lot of effort to make the biodiversity better than it is. It's already pretty good there
10:41 actually to be honest. There's a lot of important species found there, a lot of important habitats
10:45 are there. But what we want to try and do is boost that with a lot more habitat management
10:49 going on there. So we've got proper schemes for that. We'll be opening up the access so
10:54 it'll be a lot more user-friendly walks around the site, things like that. There'll be some
10:57 parking as well. So all those sort of features which will make it easier for people to get
11:02 there. Hopefully most people want to walk there, but if they want to go by car that
11:05 will be possible as well.
11:06 It's a bigger programme of developing Medway's biodiversity, developing Medway's access to
11:11 green spaces and availability of countryside sites for people to get out there, get healthy
11:17 and enjoy nature. So we want to encourage as much use of it by families visiting our
11:21 green spaces as possible. So there will be picnic benches and areas for children to play.
11:26 For now, it's watch this space to see what will come of this old golf course in Deangate
11:31 Ridge. Maryam Yaakoub for KMTV.
11:35 Well it's time for a quick break now, but before we go, here's Kent's climate conundrum
11:39 of the week. How many butterfly species are there in Kent? How many butterfly species
11:45 are there in Kent? Find out the answer after this very quick break. See you then.
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15:05 >> Hello and welcome back to Kent on Climate live on KMTV.
15:08 Now before the break we asked you Kent's climate conundrum of the week.
15:12 We asked how many butterfly species are there in Kent.
15:15 Well the answer is that Kent has 42 of the 59 butterfly species in Britain,
15:21 including two rare species.
15:23 Well did you get it right?
15:24 How close were you?
15:25 Let us know over on our socials.
15:26 Just search for KMTV Kent.
15:28 So now you know one fact about butterflies.
15:31 I took a deep dive into these colourful creatures for your flying fact of the week.
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15:39 Probably one of the most welcomed garden insect
15:43 and probably because of its striking colours and pretty patterns, the butterfly.
15:49 Kent has 42 of the 59 species here in Britain, including two rare species.
15:56 But how many do we have flying around in Kent and what draws them to our county?
16:02 In the UK as a whole we have about 59 species.
16:06 Some of these are migrant species and the number may go up in the near future due to climate change
16:15 because there are many more species of butterflies in continental Europe, about 440 for example.
16:24 Very many more.
16:26 So some of these may look across the channel and think,
16:28 "Hey, that's a nice sunny place to be after all these years."
16:33 We are extremely fortunate in Kent because you know White Cliffs of Dover and so on,
16:38 we've got a lot of chalky soil here and butterflies generally,
16:42 some butterfly species really like that soil.
16:46 So there are rare species in the UK that if you know where to look in Kent at the right time of year,
16:55 you can see them here. So we are very fortunate.
16:59 With signature soil drawing these insects in, we could even see more settling in Kent.
17:05 But before they make their bed here, what do we need to know?
17:09 1. Butterflies are cold-blooded and will not fly if the temperature is below 10 degrees Celsius.
17:15 2. The name comes from 'butter-coloured fly' after the yellow of the male brimstone butterfly.
17:22 3. They usually live for two to four weeks, but the longest lifespan of one species is nine to ten months.
17:29 4. Butterflies and insects have their skeletons on the outside of their bodies,
17:34 protecting them and keeping water inside.
17:37 5. Many butterflies can taste with their feet to find out whether the leaf they're on is good enough for their offspring to eat.
17:45 Well, those were your flying facts of the week.
17:49 Well, we hope you learnt something from that, I certainly did.
17:52 Next tonight, combining wildlife and wellbeing.
17:55 A community garden in Canterbury is a haven for volunteers and members of the public wanting to connect with nature.
18:01 Finn McDermott went along to get his fingers green.
18:04 Even though it's quiet here at the Canterbury campus out of term time,
18:09 tucked away in one corner of the university, one volunteer group are bearing the August heat.
18:14 Kent Community Garden, or Kent COG, is led by Emily Mason
18:19 and is a joint effort between the university and mental health charity East Kent Mind.
18:23 I think particularly what I've noticed for our students, so young people between 18 to 25,
18:28 the pressure on them to be on and just on it all the time.
18:33 Watching the students that access this space really put their phones down, switch off, slow down
18:41 and have to wait for something to grow, because it takes a long time to grow certain things.
18:46 There's a little bit of magic to that, I think.
18:49 The garden was formed in an effort to aid student isolation, but has grown into a much larger project.
18:55 It sees student, staff and other community members working together
18:59 and both literally and metaphorically, it's starting to bear fruit.
19:04 Engaging with nature has been shown to have extremely positive effects on people's mental health
19:09 and while it's no cure-all, going green gives people a safe community.
19:13 Some, according to the organisers, are not even particularly green-fingered.
19:17 So we started off very much as a gardening project here
19:20 and then we realised that lots of the volunteers, especially the students who come down here,
19:24 they want to get involved in other things and not necessarily gardening.
19:27 So we're expanding what we do to think about houseplants
19:31 and to do things like bee walks and butterfly counts
19:35 and doing projects that engage with nature in lots of ways.
19:40 So we've done soup making, we've done crafting with nature.
19:45 So we're trying to expand all the time to use the site as an opportunity for people just to enjoy nature,
19:52 to be in the space and to reap those benefits of being in a green space.
19:57 Not only is the garden great for its caretakers' mental health,
20:00 it's good for the health of the University,
20:03 with fresh produce being sold back to on-campus restaurants,
20:07 a pollination garden for the bees
20:09 and the garden also provides a good place for extremely different people to mix,
20:13 all the way from 18 to 80.
20:15 Well this garden has been running for a long time,
20:18 and it really started to grow after the pandemic when many were at their lowest.
20:22 One thing's for sure, getting back to your roots has never felt better.
20:26 Finn McDermott for KMTV.
20:29 Well next tonight, government pest experts are tracking down and destroying Asian hornets in Kent
20:35 after a sighting near Folkestone.
20:37 The invasive species are from China, believed to have got to the UK from France
20:41 by hibernating in packing cases full of sawdust from Asia.
20:45 Their main diet is bees, destroying a whole hive in a day.
20:49 With reports across England increasing,
20:51 the flying pests could completely devastate not only Kent's but the UK's bee population.
20:56 Well joining me on the line now is Paul Hetherington from Bug Life.
21:00 Paul, thank you very much for joining me.
21:02 Firstly, could you update us with the latest,
21:04 because this has been a developing story over the past week or so.
21:09 So last Friday, the British Bee Unit actually destroyed a primary
21:14 and secondary Asian hornet nest in the Folkestone area.
21:19 That's good news that they've managed to destroy them,
21:21 but the really worrying thing is that is the seventh nest that's been destroyed in Kent alone this year.
21:29 And we heard there in my introduction there that they've come over from China
21:34 and they were believed to have come over sort of into France in cases.
21:39 How does something like that happen without someone sort of noticing?
21:45 It's all about trading in creatures around the world really.
21:51 Well, just global trade and we send things around with soil in and with sawdust in.
21:56 There's all kinds of things packed in there and there's just no way of checking what's coming in.
22:00 Now, if you go somewhere like New Zealand,
22:02 they've got really, really strict rules on what can and can't be brought into the country.
22:06 You can't, for instance, be bringing soil in.
22:09 We don't have those kind of restrictions and nor has mainland Europe.
22:13 So, of course, these things can end up getting in there.
22:16 And particularly with our climate warming up, conditions are becoming quite reasonable
22:21 for these hornets to start to live in our environment.
22:25 And we can see on the screen now what some of them look like.
22:27 There are variants that they look a bit different there.
22:29 There are a few different sort of type species, I suppose.
22:32 Why should we be so worried about these? What are the risks?
22:37 To humans, there are no real risks.
22:40 They are slightly smaller than our native European hornet.
22:44 And unless you're allergic to the wasp type of sting,
22:48 getting stung by one presents no real problem to people.
22:52 The problem with them is their diet consists predominantly of bees
22:56 and one nest of them can wipe out an entire beehive in a day.
23:01 So it could have a catastrophic effect on things like the honey industry,
23:05 but also a catastrophic effect on pollination of our plants.
23:10 Because if they can do that to something as large as a honeybee colony,
23:15 imagine the havoc they could wreak on something like a bumblebee nest
23:18 where you might have just 50 bees, or on our solitary bee nests.
23:22 And, of course, Kent is home to some of our rarest bees.
23:25 You are one of the places where you'll find things like the shrill carderby
23:29 and the brown-banded carderby, two of our rarest bumblebees now.
23:33 They could be pushed very close to extinction
23:36 if the Asian hornets get a hold in this part of the country.
23:40 This sounds like an obvious question,
23:43 but it seems like they are so destructive and pose such a huge risk.
23:48 How high of an alert level, I suppose, are pest controls within the government
23:53 that manage these situations?
23:55 How high of a level is this and how key and important actually is destroying these nests?
24:01 It's critically important that these nests are destroyed as early as possible.
24:06 The later in the year, there's a real risk that new queens will have already hatched out
24:11 and gone off to feed themselves up and find somewhere to hibernate,
24:14 which will mean even more nests next year.
24:16 And that's when they start to get a hold.
24:18 So it's really, really important.
24:20 To the extent there is an app available, the Asian Hornet Watch app,
24:23 there's a reporting hotline, and I would advise anyone,
24:27 if you see something that you think is an Asian hornet, report it.
24:31 It may well be a European hornet, but report it anyway, get it checked out.
24:36 It's so important we keep these under control.
24:38 Don't start trying to kill them, though, because you could be killing our own European hornets.
24:42 And also, one of the best ways of finding where the nests are,
24:45 they actually track back from these Asian hornets,
24:49 and that's what leads them back to where the nest is.
24:51 Otherwise, the nests are really hard to find and very under the radar.
24:55 We are in a very populous country, but there's still a lot of very remote parts to it,
25:00 and areas, even in a built-up zone.
25:03 So it's quite hard to find where these nests are.
25:05 But if you find a hornet, it can be tracked back to the nest.
25:08 And that tracking, how exactly do they do that?
25:10 Because that's something I found really fascinating.
25:13 Well, they can actually catch them.
25:16 You can use a net or something like that to catch it,
25:18 and then they put just a tiny little transmitter onto it,
25:22 and then you can just basically track via that transmitter.
25:25 So it's a bit like your James Bond spy stuff,
25:28 but it's being used to trace where these very, very dangerous, invasive animals are now living.
25:35 Are you worried that people are, as you say, going to mistake these for hornets,
25:41 see these headlines and worry that,
25:43 "Oh, I've seen something that looks like it could be a hornet in my garden,"
25:46 and destroy it and think they're doing a good thing?
25:48 Are you worried about the increase of that?
25:50 So not only the threat from the hornet, but the threat that, I suppose, people being concerned.
25:57 As I've said, people really shouldn't start killing things, but you should report them,
26:03 because the European hornet, to the untrained eye, is fairly similar looking.
26:08 And also, having done focus groups with people, there are a number of hoverflies,
26:13 particularly the hornet hoverfly, which, again, people could easily mistake
26:17 because hoverflies are completely harmless pollinators.
26:20 So I think it's really important people don't start killing them.
26:23 You do start reporting them.
26:25 People will come and check it out, particularly in the Kent area.
26:28 As I say, the seven nests have been destroyed since the middle of July in Kent this year.
26:33 That would indicate that probably last year there were at least one,
26:37 probably a couple of breeding colonies there.
26:40 Thank you, Paul.
26:41 I'm afraid I'm sorry to cut you off.
26:43 We've run out of time there, but thank you for giving out that warning to the public.
26:47 That's all for tonight.
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