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MINISTERS FIDDLE WHILE THEIR OWN WILDLIFE SITES - Burn, Flood, Erode, Get Chewed, Ploughed & Concreted Over

26 Oct 1998

FOE Wildlife Campaigner Matt Phillips commented:

    “Labour talks a good green game. But where's the action? Every day our finest wildlife sites are being trampled, chewed, ploughed or built on. That's a precious legacy of beauty and natural diversity being thrown away while we watch. Labour Ministers should have noticed by now - the damage is right there under their noses in their own constituencies. Our children deserve better from us than this. We want the new Wildlife Bill that Labour promised us. And we want it now.”

Ministers with constituency SSSIs shown as damaged in the FOE report include:

.    Prime Minister Tony Blair (Sedgefield) - loss of half the Thrislington SSSI to make way for a quarry, and serious degradation of the Hell Kettles SSSI through loss of rare pondlife
.    Trade Secretary Peter Mandelson (Hartlepool) - continuing threats to Seal SandsSSSI in the Tees Estuary, coastal erosion at Seaton Dunes and Common and Hart Warren Dunes
.    Chancellor Gordon Brown (Dunfermline) - Carlingnose SSSI partly destroyed by housing and roads, and suffering from recreational pressues.
.    Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott (Hull East) - coastal erosion, decreasing sedimentation and loss of tidal mud in the Humber Estuary (North Side)
.    Cabinet “Enforcer” Jack Cunningham (Copeland) - over-grazing and acidification at Scafell Pike.

Other key Ministers included in the report are Social Security Secretary Alistair Darling,Welsh Secretary Ron Davies, and Transport Minister Glenda Jackson. SSSIs have also been damaged in the constituencies of Liberal Leader Paddy Ashdown and Tory Leader William Hague.

Before the General Election, Labour repeatedly promised urgent action to protect wildlife sites. The Party's manifesto said: “We will ensure greater protection for wildlife”. In November 1997, Environment Minister Michael Meacher said: “We intend to bring forward new legislation which will revise the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981. I am keen to have that legislation on the statute book in the next Parliamentary session.”

The Government has now published a Green Paper on wildlife protection. But no Wildlife Bill is likely to be announced in the next Queen's Speech and New Labour sources have suggested that there can be no guarantees of action even in the 1999/00 session.

NOTES TO EDITORS

1.    “Greater Protection for Wildlife: wildlife sites under threat in minister's constituencies” by Peter Marren for Friends of the Earth, is available from FOE Head Office, 26-28 Underwood Street, London N1 7JQ.