At the meeting on April 7th 2026, the new Biodiversity Action Plan was presented to members by the Biodiversity Lead and Officer. Producing the plan is a statutory requirement for all community and town councils under Section 6 of the Environment (Wales) Act 2016. The new plan, approved at the meeting, is timely and of particular importance for Rhossili.
Rhossili is tiny in population but huge in environmental importance. We’re located inside a stack of national and international environmental designations: SSSI, SAC, SPA, NNR, Dark Sky Community, to name a few. These are designations to be cherished and nurtured on an ongoing basis if we are to retain them – a real challenge for a very fragile landscape that also comes under very high visitor pressure.
With this in mind, there were two other major considerations to shape the new plan:
- The new Environment (Principles, Governance and Biodiversity Targets) (Wales) Bill 2026, which requires all public bodies — including small councils — to actively protect and restore nature using the four principles of precaution, prevention, fixing at source and ‘polluter pays’. In essence, our approach should not be just to try to mitigate harm to local biodiversity and ecosystems through gestures that are disproportionate to the harm, like planting a tree or putting up a bat box, but to prevent the harm in the first place and at the same time, seek to enhance what is already there.
- The 2027 merger of the 4 existing local community councils to form the new De Gŵyr/ South Gower Community Council. With a reduction in councillor representation for Rhossili from 7 councillors to 2, there is a risk of losing local knowledge and continuity, so this plan helps lock in our biodiversity priorities before that happens.
In the first section of the report, we draw on the points above to set out why a Biodiversity Action Plan is so important for Rhossili. We then follow the Nature Recovery Action Plan framework to outline our planned actions across 4 key objectives to ensure that we keep Rhossili special, meet new legal duties and that biodiversity stays central to community council considerations during and after the 2027 merger.
Featured image: Native 7-spot ladybird on an oak leaf, March 2026 – the gardener’s friend!