Heart goes out to nature reserve volunteers

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of the East Kilbride News.

The pictures on pages 4 and 5 of today’s paper paint a thousand words.

East Kilbride photographer Duncan Chisholm sent us images of a huge fire at the Langlands Moss nature reserve last Tuesday night.

The News would like to thank Duncan for his pictures and first-hand account of what he saw during the evening.

The blaze has caused around £40,000 worth of damage and is a devastating blow to the Friends of Langlands Moss (FOLM) organisation who run the site, which is owned by South Lanarkshire Council.

A successful fundraising campaign meant work on replacing a section of the boardwalk was about to begin.

Those plans are now in tatters and FOLM don’t know where to go from here.

Our thoughts are with the nature reserve volunteers and we will do all that we can to promote their future fundraising activities so this beautiful site can be restored to glory.

Elsewhere in the paper, and on page 8 we begin our coverage of the General Election to be held next month.

All of the candidates for the East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow constituency have been confirmed and we wish them well on the campaign trail.

We will provide each candidate with opportunities to speak directly to you, our readers, ahead of the June 8 poll.

It goes without saying that the News will remain neutral in its stance for we believe you are capable of making up your own minds on who to vote for. No candidate will be favoured. Our recent council election coverage was second to none and you can expect a similar standard of reporting from our team over the coming weeks.