Nearly 300 sites of special scientific interest, home to rare animals and plants, have been opened up to fracking by the Tory government, RSPB study shows

Hundreds more of England’s most important wildlife sites are now at risk from fracking after the government opened up 1,000 sq miles of land to the controversial technology, a new analysis has found.

Among the 159 licences issued last month to explore for oil and gas onshore in the UK - likely to include fracking for shale oil or gas - are 293 sites of special scientific interest (SSSI), the definition given to an area protecting rare species or habitats.

According to the RSPB, which compiled the list of SSSIs, the result could be significant damage to the UK’s remaining habitats for rare wildlife and plants.

Martin Harper, director of conservation at the charity, said the government had backtracked on its pledges to protect important habitats. “In February, Amber Rudd [energy and climate change secretary] specifically promised to ban fracking within all sites of special scientific interest, but this promise seems to have been forgotten,” he said.

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While the government has pledged to restrict fracking in national parks, in July it made a U-turn on a pre-election promise to protect the thousands of SSSIs in the UK. There are 4,000 such sites in England, more than 1,000 in Wales and 1,425 in Scotland.

“We simply don’t understand why SSSIs – some of the UK’s best and most sensitive wildlife sites and landscapes – aren’t being offered full protection from fracking, when national parks, world heritage sites and areas of outstanding natural beauty are being excluded from fracking completely,” said Harper.

Bempton Cliffs, home to one of Europe’s largest seabird colonies, is one of the nine RSPB reserves included within the new fracking licences announced by the government. Two others are Nagshead and Fairburn Ings.

Fracking is the process of blasting dense shale rocks with high-pressure jets of water, sand and chemicals, in order to create tiny fissures that allow the microscopic bubbles of natural gas trapped within the rocks to escape, where they can be captured and piped to the surface. The technology is controversial, having caused minor earthquakes in the UK at the only site here to have been fracked, and is the subject of protests by environmental campaigners.

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The RSPB said that fracking at sensitive wildlife sites could cause disruption, habitat loss and fragmentation, and disturbance to wildlife from noise and light pollution, as well as potential effects on the water supply.

On Wednesday, a task force set up by the shale gas industry concluded that fracking for shale gas in the UK would not have an impact on attempts to combat climate change, and reiterated previous findings that fracking would be safe for people and wildlife, if properly regulated.

Harper said the government could still make good its earlier promises not to frack in SSSIs by annulling the licences before they are finalised. He said this would have little impact on the UK’s fledgling fracking industry, as the area of sensitive sites within the licensed land amounted to less than 11,000 hectares, which is less than 1% of the area of land offered under licence.

He said: “SSSIs make up a very small percentage of the licence areas that the government has offered, therefore ruling them out would have almost zero impact on the industry but could be a major benefit for wildlife.”