We all must fight to save our green and pleasant land
BY SPEAKING out against the attempt to install zip wires across Thirlmere (Mail), Melvyn Bragg is absolutely right to highlight the fact that the reason the Lake District is so popular is because it offers ‘tranquillity of mind and body’. This is something so many of us seek and enjoy when we find it, to recharge our batteries before entering back into the hubbub of life. All over the country, small groups are desperately defending the open and natural spaces that most of us hold dear — parks, coastline, commons, heaths and woodland. Conservation groups such as the Woodland Trust, the Bat Conservation Trust and the Open Spaces Society can’t cope with fighting every threat and rely on local groups to be the first line of defence. I have been fighting for two years to stop Surrey County Council and Surrey Wildlife Trust from exploiting one of the loveliest beauty spots in the South-East — Newlands Corner Common. Half a million visitors go there every year because it is uncommercialised and natural. No one has asked for change and yet these two organisations are determined to turn the common into a play park and cash cow. This could threaten one of the most important sites in western Europe for ancient yews. Putting a playground in the woodland would destroy the habitat of the threatened hazel dormouse. What is required is stronger legislation to stop these threats. In the case of registered commons, more power needs to be given to the neutered Planning Inspectorate. If the Government is serious about the environment, it needs to do something quickly before our natural places are swamped by artificiality, commercial greed and the instant gratification culture. JOHN OLIVER, Guildford, Surrey. I MAY be a philistine, but I think that Melvyn Bragg’s objection to the Lake District zip wire is over the top. As Wordsworth recognised, the Lakes are a place for emotion as well as tranquillity, and they can easily co-exist without subjecting the landscape to the silence of taxidermy. D. E. OWENS, Pinner, Middlesex.