Wild Things columnist Eric Brown heard some unwelcome news for wildlife during the party political conferences in proposals he hopes will be scrapped faster than the northern leg of HS2.

Often I totally ignore the political party conferences as they simply produce more hot air than the Blackwall Tunnel. Politicians of all parties climb on stage to spew bile at their rivals and outline a crop of vague ideas they imagine potential voters want to hear. Usually most of these crowd-pleasing notions are quietly forgotten somewhere down the line.

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However I broke my habit of indifference when Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves appeared on television. I was hoping not for revolutionary ideas on how to revive the economy in her speech but for some of the best comedy since Peter Kay's last series. Rachel soon had me chuckling until she came to a bit with horrific potential implications for wildlife. Taking up Labour's theme of mass building, she said the party intends to ease planning regulations and will consider building on cherished green belt land. And there's more. It also emerged Labour is contemplating plonking thousands of pylons across England's green and pleasant land as it strives to deliver on the party's net zero plan of making the whole electricity supply carbon free. This would be done by 2030, five years faster than the current Government's target.

An increased pylon army would make the countryside as attractive to the human eye as an XL Bully dog. Apparently Labour plans to bribe landowners and protesters by offering energy bill discounts to those who co-operate. But how about the wildlife ? Ugly pylons might be welcomed by ravens and peregrines for perching but nesting birds and mammals below will be driven away by construction work. They will also present extra hazards for unwary birds in flight. Building houses on green belt land would set a disturbing precedent. Goodness knows the present Tory Government has proved weak on nature. For example it approved and presided over slaughter of protected badgers on flimsy grounds that the animals might just be passing TB to cattle. Yet we are being encouraged to eat less meat and cattle are blamed for polluting the atmosphere with their emissions. I don't recall Therese Coffey coming up with a single wildlife-backing measure since becoming Environment Secretary. As far as I can trace, her main contribution in her new job has been to state she won't impose EU regulations on bendy bananas! Her party has also failed to stop water companies endangering wildlife such as otters, fish, herons and kingfishers with sewage discharges into rivers and seas.

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The Tory conference announcement cancelling HS2's northern leg seems like a wildlife bonus. It might save some northern nature reserves but how many have already been destroyed because they lay in the path of bulldozers clearing the London-Birmingham route? The original HS2 notion may well have been hatched at a previous Labour conference. After all' it was Labour's idea. Let us hope for the sake of our birds, mammals and insects that the pylon army and green belt building proposals will die a quicker death than the countryside-scarring HS2. One thing Rachel will surely have achieved is the loss of any potential General Election Labour votes from the massed ranks of nature lovers out there.