Image description: Ecologists monitoring life in the River Itchen in Hampshire, wearing a white hat, blue shirt and waders. Image by Martin Godwin/The Guardian

Chalk streams are some of the rarest habitats in the world – there are only 200, and England boasts 85% of them. However, despite the rarity and importance of these very pure rivers, which are full of minerals from the chalk aquifer, they have no specific legal protections.

The Guardian reports environmentalists fear the Labour party’s planning bill will use the country’s departure from the EU to make it legal for developers to destroy them, as long as they offset the damage by paying into a fund to create nature somewhere else.

Chalk streams currently beneft from some protections under the EU-derived habitats directive, which safeguards some of the rare creatures the streams support. But Labour’s new planning and infrastructure bill overrides these protections, allowing developers to pay into a nature restoration fund instead of avoiding destruction and pollution in building. While this tradeoff will be beneficial in some cases, nature campaigners argue that you cannot offset damage done to a rare habitat as irreplaceable as a chalk stream. Labour would not be able to change the law on habitat protection had Brexit not happened, as it would mean flouting the EU habitats directive.

The Wildlife Trusts have supported an amendment to the planning bill, tabled by the Labour MP Chris Hinchliff, that would enshrine protections for chalk streams as irreplaceable habitats. Planners would have to ensure they were not harming the rare habitats with abstraction, pollution or runoff when designing their developments.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has described people calling for stronger protections as “blockers” because of their nature campaigning. The government has also described nature protections as “red tape” that needs to be cut.