I don’t really see the point in comparing old projects which happened when habitat conservation wasn’t really thought about. I’m just saying what I have been directly told by extremely reputable conservation scientists and ecologists with multiple doctorate degrees and 20+ years experience, who have many many published papers on subjects like this. But this is the internet, and anyone can be an expert if they say they are. Id love to see some academic papers suggesting hs2 is good for protecting conservation areas? And just for context, mitigating impact of such projects also has its own host of problems, and rarely ever actually compensated for the lost ecosystems.