Nature vandals should be ashamed

UNTIL today I had loved my walk to Sainsbury’s Oakley from Battledown, as I passed the beautiful “nature garden” in front of the advertisement hoardings to the right of Prior’s Road near its junction with Harp Hill.

This afternoon I was distraught to find only burnt/dry stalks, where there had been herb robert, red valerian, dandelion, field poppy and blue borage among other wonderful wild plants.

They had been deliberately torched and killed off for no valid reason.

This hasn’t just destroyed these lovely wild plants, but the weed-killer will poison, maim and kill other wildlife, such as foraging birds and small mammals like mice and voles and many pollinating insects such as honey and bumblebees, wasps, hornets, beetles, ladybirds and hoverflies - indeed a whole food chain. This is nothing less than anti-social behaviour and the perpetrators should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

How could you? How dare you despoil this beauty, which was harming no one and was actually beneficial to people’s well-being and mental health?

Instead we should all be doing whatever we can to restore the 60 per cent of our precious wildlife that’s in trouble.

Further weed-killer had been used on the Prior’s Road/harp Hill junction/ pavement areas, which have just been subjected to roadworks. Whoever it was, we need to learn some lessons and quickly if we are serious about climate change and wildlife depletion.

J Wilcock Battledown