Fait Accompli

Phony consultations are so commonplace in the world of the conservation industry you expect little else . To be fair most consultations in public life anywhere amount to providing the powers that be with material that they can trawl through to find useful comments to justify what they always wanted to do. SWT's bid for £44,000 plus from the Forestry Commission (mostly to destroy trees) was subject to certain conditions being met and one of these was that it had to be demonstrated that there was local support. To this end notices were put up telling people what was going to happen. Note it was what was going to happen not what might happen subject to the results of the 'consultation'. At the bottom of the notice was a sentence telling us that we could comment via the 'public register' if we did so by a certain date. The day after that date had passed SWT's tree cutters were out in the woods busy with their chain saws. No time had been allowed for consideration of those comments whatever they might say so the work could begin on a pre-planned date. So there was never any doubt, was there, that this was going to happen and the comments on the public register were always known to make no difference. In fact that much was clear from the notices anyway. How long can those in public office carry on running these phony exercises when it's becoming common knowledge that commenters are just wasting their time and energy?

Now you can see the effects in the woods. As far as I can see those felled are sycamore which have a habit of creating a canopy that does not suit the requirements of the lesser spotted woodpecker et al; it is also a non- native tree which scores negative points. Yet not far away numerous native birches of mature status have also been felled in recent years and it looks as if that might be the fate of some more now SWT have this grant.