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Prince Piles Pressure on Blair Over New Wildlife Laws
22 September 1999
Prince Charles has today piled pressure on Tony Blair to introduce new laws to protect the UK's finest wildlife areas, Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) by calling for 'tougher safeguards' in a message to a conference celebrating 50 years of landscape protection in Britain.
The Government has been under pressure to live up to its Manifesto promise to improve SSSI protection - SSSIs and National Parks are 50 years old this year. In a message to the conference Prince Charles made a clear statement supporting the call for new laws,identifying tougher safeguards as the way to tackle problems such as intensive agriculture and inappropriate development.
Matt Phillips of Friends of the Earth said:
“The Prince has hit the nail on the head. Over 300 SSSIs suffer damage every year and the problem is safeguards for their protection are far too weak - our wildlife is suffering, as the Prince highlights, a death by a thousand cuts. The Government has come up with some good proposals, it's time they were made law. The Prince's intervention puts pressure on the Prime Minister to introduce a wildlife bill this year.”
The Prince said:
“Perhaps this is a good moment to reflect on the fate of all those other special areas of our counryside which do not enjoy such protection. In such a crowded island, our landscape -and the incredible diversity of wildlife it supports - will always be under resssure from insensitive and inappropriate development, intensive agricultural and forestry practices,road-building and a host of other activties which, while they may individually seem reasonable, have a devastating cumulative effect. There is no simple answewr to these problems, other than to seek tougher safeguards for the areas of special interest and to keep reminding ourselves of the price we pay for development.”
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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust
Last modified: Jul 2008
