On 7th May, I had a telephone conversation with Simon Clarke, head of Nature Recovery at Somerset Wildlife Trust.

He is contacting CSL Parish Council to demand they print a retraction of their Facebook & media statement to the Gazette, in which they falsely claimed the Trust advocated their actions of spraying toxic weed killer.   

He told me that Somerset Wildlife Trust never promotes in ANY context the use of herbicides / pesticides, that its purpose is for the promotion of wildlife.

He also stated that is it not appropriate for a 3rd party to use the WT name to misrepresent what was a ‘mis communication’  error between a colleague and someone from CSL PC.

Simon reiterated that the WT advocates a massive reduction in using herbicides, by using other (mechanical) means wherever possible and it has published information about this on the WT website.

Simon also informed me they had received many calls from the public in support of this petition, asking them to clarify SWT’s position.  So I have added their contact details below. 

The WT is also keen to publish their own media statement shortly on this issue.