Today I visited the beautiful Jones Hill Wood AKA the Roald Dahl Woods where Dahl based his famous story ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’. In the next few days, this beautiful woodland will be felled by HS2 and all the beautiful trees that make up this magical place will be gone forever. Natural England granted them the licences to move or destroy bat roosts in order to do so and now they are felling the trees with utter relish so it seems..
To me, one of the worst things I have discovered in the last few weeks that I have been involved with this petition, is the absolute and total inhumanity of the HS2 workers that are actually involved with the felling. The real face that the public should know of HS2 is the one of men and women wearing full balaclavas, acting with utter unprofessional disrespect, not only for the wildlife they are destroying but for the bystanders, whoever they may be.
Witness to this - in a video I managed to capture today, two men felling one of the first small trees on the outskirts of the wood - can be seen hugging and high-fiveing each other in celebration. Celebrating what? The death of the tree? Their pathetic show of strength in managing to topple it over after it had been sawn in half? Or just a cowardly act to try and taunt anyone who had fought to save the trees.
It saddens me to know that HS2 cannot ensure that this desecration of wildlife is at least carried out with dignity and respect.
My heart breaks knowing that this whole beautiful woodland area is, soon to be, completely destroyed.
We must continue to fight to stop HS2 from potentially doing the same to Leather Lane. It is not too late!!!! Please don’t stop sharing the petition- we need it to continue momentum - as many signatures as possible.
Remember : We have managed to save some of the trees but we must make HS2 accountable for the review they promised with regards the felling of the remaining trees. So far we have had no further update on this. We need to put legal pressure on them to ensure that all licences are lawful; including those issued by Natural England. We need to ensure that all ground and ecological surveys of trees and the surrounding habitat are thorough and that mitigation bat boxes are placed in good time and positions for the bats to transfer their roosts to them.
We need to get answers to our questions about the re-routing of the ‘temporary’ haulage road and haulage site.
So....Please, please keep donating money to the crowdfunding page below so that we can employ all the necessary independent professionals to front our legal enquiries as soon as possible and stop HS2 in their tracks from felling any more trees unnecessarily in Leather Lane and hold them accountable for their crimes against nature!!
Also, if you would prefer to pay less than £5, let me know so that I can send you my PayPal and will add up all smaller donations to send to the crowdfunding directly! I can then list your names collectively in the comment section alongside each each donation I make on your behalf.
Also, if you would rather not pay the tip to the GoFundMe site, you can scroll down to ‘other’ where it says ‘thank you for including a tip of...’ and type in £0.00!
Thank you!
Blaize x