Today, the 29th October we mark the first anniversary of our celebration of Ilona’s registration with the Woodland Trust Ancient Tree Inventory.
We can’t believe it’s a year since we gathered with local residents and councillors to make our feelings clear to HS2 about the proposed felling of Ilona for 'landscaping'.
Letters of support for Ilona objecting to her needless felling were sent to HS2 by the Woodland Trust and Sarah Green MP, the Great Missenden Parish Council amongst others. But even more importantly, over 200 of our supporters wrote to Mark Thurston, at that time the CEO of HS2, calling on him to properly consider all the alternative options to felling Ilona. We are all so grateful for your support.
Sarah Green MP wrote in support: “I urge HS2 Ltd to find a way to save Ilona. Their response to my most recent letter was weak - planting other new woodland is not a replacement for a single iconic ancient oak that a community feels is part of their identity.”
For more information check out our press release HERE and our website HERE.
Our voices definitely made a difference - EKFB listened and one year later, Ilona is still standing proud, protected by fencing and signs declaring 'Tree protection Zone'.
All this gives us hope. However, since Align has recently taken over from EKFB as HS2 sub-contractor at Leather Lane and the area where Ilona stands we have written to Align to ensure that they are aware of the depth of feeling within the community about our beloved tree. Read our letter HERE.
We are asking Align to make a commitment to save Ilona for the community. We will keep you all updated in respect of our correspondence with Align. we hope that they will respect the depth of community feeling and find a way to save Ilona. If not we will of course let you know how you an help.
Please help us to celebrate by finding her listing HERE and add your comments.
She is registered as Ilona, the Lone Oak. Tree ID. 235601. Notable Tree.
A last plea
For several years, we have campaigned to preserve the wildlife corridor formed by a line of oak trees, planted beside Leather Lane by the Liberty family. This is now one of the last remaining East-West links across the HS2 route, and so heavily used by wildlife, particularly bats. The HS2 design specifies a new bridge, to be constructed on the south side of the lane, which would pass through the tree corridor twice.
So far, the Campaign has
- Paid a Consultant Engineer to design a bridge to the North side of the lane, which allows all the remaining 87 trees to be preserved.
- Raised over £25,000 (by a crowdfunder) to pay for this.
- Held a meeting with EKFB (the HS2 contractors) and Bucks councillors, at which it was established that our bridge design meets the required specifications.
- Conducted a bat survey over many nights, before and after some of the trees were felled, and paid for this to be analysed. The endangered Barbastelle bat was recorded on numerous occasions, along with 7 other species.
- Drawn attention to the failure of the contractor to implement the required tree protection measures for the trees to be retained; this has now been rectified.
- Gathered 43,000 signatures on a petition to save these trees.
- Registered Ilona with the Ancient Tree Inventory.
- Organised a letter writing campaign to Mark Thurston (former HS2 CEO) to object to the felling of the iconic Ilona the lone oak, which has resulted in Ilona remaining in the ground to date.
We continue to collect bat data, hold bat walks for local people to attend and we are campaigning for a green overbridge to be part of the design.
Engineers and Ecologists are not cheap!
Please contribute to our Crowdfunder, and help us bring our mission to save Leather Lane, and Ilona to a successful conclusion.
How you can help
Please continue to share our local petition with your friends and family. For friends, family and colleagues that are not local to Leather Lane, you can email them our Change.Org petition to sign. We have over 43,000 signatures and it would be amazing to get this figure to 50,000.
You can also help by following us on our social media channels below, sharing our Facebook posts, retweeting our Tweets and reposting our stories on Instagram.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LeatherLaneCG
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OaksSave
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ilonatheoak
Website:
If you can assist in any way, please let us know by email. Any help will be most gratefully received, no matter how small.
Photo Credit: Chartridge Photographic.