Actor West joins Sizewell ‘once in a generation’ protest over threat to nature

THE RSPB has staged a “once in a generation” protest against plans for a nuclear plant on a nature reserve in Suffolk, which they claim will endanger more than 6,000 species.

All Creatures Great and Small actor Samuel West joined volunteers and representatives from the charity outside the Department for Business in Westminster yesterday as they lobbied Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng to drop proposals for EDF’S new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Minsmere reserve.

The proposals would see a breeding area the size of eight football pitches lost, as well as some three million fish, according to RSPB estimates.

Outside the department, West and other volunteers read out hundreds of names of species which they say would be put at risk by the power plant. The campaigners also held up banners which said: “Do the right thing for nature Kwasi #loveminsmere”.

The actor, who plays vet Siegfreid Farnon in Channel 5’s James Herriot adaptation, said of Minsmere: “I don’t think I know anywhere lovelier. It’s an extraordinary collection of habitats, internationally important numbers of threatened species, and we’re very lucky to have it. So if we can’t protect this, then we can’t protect anything.”