CS31: Legal Constraints (WaCA)

The Wildlife and Countryside Act (WaCA) 1981 is, quite frankly a total minefield of various bits of legislation, but it exists to protect the habitats of various bugs and beasties.

Just to give you a taste of this minefield, since WaCA 1981 there have been various amendments to the Act, most significantly through the Countryside Rights of Way (CRoW) Act of 2000... and the Nature Conservation Act (2004)(Scotland)... and the Local Government Act 1985, the Water Act 1989, the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and so it goes on! The CRoW Act also significantly changed SSSI (Sites of Special Scientific Interest) legislation in England and Wales.

But we don't particularly need to know all that for our purposes...

Find out more here...

OK, so you've probably got the idea that it's a potentially complex issue - that's why we have ecologists who love this sort of thing(?) - but we're just interested in how it applies to us cutting down a tree or two.

Possibly the most important, and most likely things we are likely to do is destroy either a bat roost, or a bird's nest. Red squirrels are also protected and you'll need to check for your area within the UK (and there are some pockets of red squirrels in the South of England too).

The Act protects wild birds, and it is an offence to:

• kill, injure or take any wild bird.


• take, damage or destroy the nest of any wild bird while it is in use, or being built.


• disturb any wild bird that has been listed in Schedule 1 while it is nest building, or at a nest containing eggs or young, or disturb the dependent young of such a bird.

Clearly, felling a tree that contains such a bird (nest), or felling a tree into another tree / shrub / hedgerow that contains the nest of one these birds could leave you open to prosecution under the Act. Bats are another highly protected species and were protected under Schedule 5 of WaCA, however since 2007 the effective protection of bat species has been accomplished through Schedule 2 of the Conservation Regulations 1994. Either way it is an offence to:

• damage or destroy a bat roost (whether or not the bat is there)


• intentionally or recklessly disturb a bat at roost


• obstrust access to a bat roost

A bat roost is any structure or place which any wild bat uses for shelter or protection, and as bats can and will reuse the same roost it is protected whether the bat, or bats, is / are present.

Give Me A Hand...

How much attention do you give your personal protective equipment? Do you just throw it in the back of the wagon once you've finished the job? How do you dry out your gear once it's been soaked in the latest summer downpour? In this post, I'll take a look at chainsaw gloves - and hopefully they don't look like the pair in the photo. Find out more after the jump...

As you can guess from the picture at the top, these chainsaw gloves were not in a condition to provide any protection - if you're gloves look like that, do yourself a favour and replace them. New chainsaw gloves are not really that cheap - not like a pair of work gloves at £1.99, and so you should look after them. But how?

Ever read those little paper booklets that come with new gloves / jackets / helmets / boots / etc.? Stihl recently sent us a new pair of gloves and I thought I'd take a moment to browse through the leaflet and report my findings.

During the course of normal tree work, chainsaw gloves live a hard life, dragging brash, using a chainsaw, winching and so on. They get pretty grubby, pretty quickly and if they then get wet as well they'll set rock hard - making them difficult to put on and uncomfortable to wear. Improper care will also accelerate the demise of the stitching caused by fuel, oil and maybe stump protection fluids - all things that are not recommended to come in to contact with the gloves.

I've never read the leaflet that comes with gloves and I'm as guilty as the next person of just abusing them until they fall apart and then getting another pair - but what I found was interesting. For instance, were you aware that you can wash those gloves? I wasn't, but it turns out that these Stihl gloves can be washed gently in warm, soapy water when they get dirty. Or contaminated with petrol. Or oil. Or indeed, anything else. Of course, they need to be dried, in just the same way they should be if they get thoroughly soaked during inclement weather.

Drying gloves should be done without unnatural sources of heat, i.e. don't go putting them directly on a radiator, or use a hairdryer to drive off the moisture. Put them somewhere where they can dry out slowly over time and once dry, they should be treated with a leather feed - I'm thinking something like NikWax should do.

So, it seems that looking after your gloves might just save you some money - but there's obviously a 'fiddle-factor' involved in maintaining them. Having said that, I've got an oldish pair of Husqvarna gloves that could do with a good clean, I might just try it and see what happens...

Chainsaw Safety...

There's no escaping the fact that wands of doom chainsaws are potentially lethal, but sometimes it's not the chainsaw per se that's your biggest danger. So how do you know what hazards there are, and just how risky are they?

Risk assessments are often thought to be a complete chore, but once you know how to set about doing a risk assessment - whether you write everything down, or just go through the points in your mind, it's pretty quick and a few minutes thought will make everything much safer for you.

The first step in completing a risk assessment is to try and work out what the dangers (or hazards) are. You can then calculate how dangerous they are by working out a risk rating and then attempting to reduce this rating by implementing control measures - essentially doing something that will reduce the risk to you and those around you.

So, we have 3 steps to a risk assessment:

1. Identify the hazards.
   


2. Calculate the risk.
   


3. Implement control measures.

Identifying hazards can be quite tricky - ask a group of people about the hazards they face and you're likely to come up with the obvious 3 or 4 hazards... and then it goes quiet; to help you with this, try to work out what hazards there are that relate to the...

• Site: where you will be working. This could include the terrain, ground conditions, trip hazards, weather, utility lines and so on.


• Task: what is that you are doing? Could you cut yourself whilst maintaining the saw, get grease and dirt in your eyes from improper use of the airline? What about lifting heavy timbers?


• Machine: what equipment will you be using? There are hazards with the saw, airlines, winches or any other tools that you're likely to use.
  

There's no need to list all the really obvious stuff - we all know you shouldn't drink petrol (although I have drunk some Hungarian stuff that would boost the octane rating of any fuel).

Generally, you need to be thinking about hazards that pose a threat to not just yourself, but to others around you.

You can calculate the risk, and many firms operate a 'traffic light' system where a red indicator would depict a high risk, amber a medium risk and green a low risk. We'll take a look at calculating risk in a later post.

Once you know the hazards, you can work out how to minimise them - putting out signs, or setting up an exclusion zone is a classic instance of protecting third-parties from you doing something daft with your chainsaw (or to stop those members of the public who just have to stand next to you to see what you're doing.

If there's a team of you going out with a saw then complete the risk assessment together and make sure that everyone in the team knows what the risks are and how to avoid them.