ReThinkHS2 – Last Christmas
Annie Lennox, Chris Packham and Emma Thompson join forces with
leading environmental organisations to Stand For The Trees threatened by HS2.
More than 100 of the UK’s irreplaceable ancient woodlands, and the wildlife they support, such as endangered bats, butterflies and barn owls are facing what could be their last Christmas, as the £100billion+ mega project HS2 awaits a decision from our government that could allow their destruction.
Annie Lennox (music), Chris Packham (starring) and Emma Thompson (voiceover) have joined forces to contribute to a film aimed at inspiring people to come together in what could be a last chance to Stand For The Trees. Our government needs to know that a green army are amassing who will not let our irreplaceable natural history be destroyed; this is one Christmas ad everyone needs to see.
The film, directed by Ornette Spenceley, portrays the relationship of an 8 year old boy and the wood he plays in. On encountering HS2 workers destroying his wood, he takes a decoration, a robin, from the Christmas tree in his home, and places it on the branch of a tree in the wood. A lady with a dog encounters the tree and returns to add her own decoration … more people do the same … word spreads and soon a delighted boy returns to find a whole
community gathered around a fully decorated ancient tree. The whole community has come together for the trees.
The film was shot entirely in Jones Hill Wood, the ancient woodland Roald Dahl based his story ‘The Fantastic Mr Fox’ on, which is one of the 108 ancient woodlands set to be destroyed by HS2. The wood is owned by Richard Stewart-Liberty, grandson of the founder of Liberty’s, and the surrounding farmland is owned by the Bunce’s, one of the farming families in the book, who try to kill the fox. In a unique twist of fate, the Bunce’s now find themselves supporting the campaign to save the wood and all the wildlife it supports.
The film supports the #ReThinkHS2 campaign of leading environmental organisations including Client Earth, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, The Ramblers, RSPB, The Wildlife Trusts, The woodland Trust and WWF.
Annie Lennox, who contributed to the film soundtrack with an acoustic version of her song ‘Why’, produced by Mike Stevens, said, ‘I’m honoured to support this campaign with one of my songs. ‘Why?’ is the question we must all ask ourselves in a time of Climate and Ecological Emergency. Why do we continue to destroy Nature… our precious life support system? Ancient woodlands have stood for hundreds of years and evolved to support whole eco-systems of their own. Destroying these irreplaceable trees is equivalent
to demolishing National Trust properties to make way for shopping malls. That’s why I’m standing for the trees’.
Emma Thompson said, ‘HS2 is and has always been an overpriced white elephant. Ours is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, so when we create new train lines they must avoid irreplaceable ancient woodlands. Nothing else makes sense. It’s time to stand for the trees’.
Chris Packham describes the threat of HS2 as: ‘Catastrophic …. the largest deforestation process that we’ve undertaken in the UK since the first world war, at a time we know we should be reforesting the environment, not taking it down. The wildlife that we’ve got, we should be fighting tooth and nail to protect. These cathedrals of biodiversity cannot be replaced. You can rebuild Notre Dame and it will look pretty much the same, but if you cut these woods
down you cannot rebuild them by sticking in a few saplings. Let’s stand for the trees’.
A spokesperson for the ReThinkHS2 campaign said, ‘In the face of the Climate and Ecological Emergency, the world is increasingly waking up to the potential of trees to help rescue us, through absorbing emissions that warm our planet, helping to keep it cool. Tree planting initiatives are appearing everywhere, although globally, we’re still losing around 10billion trees every year. We hear a lot about the loss of the Amazon and the Indonesian Rainforests, but not the ancient woodlands set to be destroyed on our own doorstep. We need to look after our own backyard too’.
Credits:
Stills Photography: Antonia Mixie Salter
Dark Energy Films:
Director: Ornette Spenceley
Executive Producer: Matt Brown
Producer: Phil Burgess
Production Manager: Louisa Plumstead
Production Assistant: Laura Mival
Agency & Client:
Executive Producer: Pete Myers
Producer (Beetle TV): Lyndsay Myerscough
Creative Director (Mutts & Misfits): Brian Cooper
I have since its inception been opposed to HS2 it is a vanity project, its the only thing I agree with the otherwise odious Farage on. Not only that but the planned route taking in as it does all these ancient woodlands ( and some other vital habitats) looks like it was drawn up by some 60s or 70s planner with no thought to the irreplaceable nature of this woodland. If it were absolutely necessary to have this railway why not route it through farmland– answer its cheaper to go through habitats important to nature, well it damned well shouldn’t be, you cannot measure everything in terms of money! Yet we have lots of farmland why is that seen as sacrosanct?
A good point Paul! Afraid I have to repeat yet again we throw away a third of our food, but continued support for subsidised marginal farming seems to trump conservation. This public subsidy seems to be sacrosanct, but if a farmer can make a packet from selling land to a developer then suddenly national food security is forgotten. The farm I worked on got a grant to plant hedgerows, the reason why they were planted though was to provide screening to help the farmer sell off land to builders in the future, the houses wouldn’t be seen so easier to get planning permission and fewer objections. There’s the anecdote about road builders deliberately planning for new roads to go through existing woodland so they would act as a visual and aural screen to the traffic! I can believe this, civil engineers have a terrible reputation re taking an interest in conservation, essentially they don’t. In my district we have not one, but two multi, multi million pound lottery funded attractions that could and should have provided fantastic opportunities for conservation and nature study – the Falkirk Wheel and the Helix. Neither have done so and in spite of a lot of money and attention going into expressing the industrial heritage connected with the canals there is literally not one word about their wildlife value. This to me goes beyond apathy to antipathy of something which can be a barrier to the spreading of concrete.
A diabolical project . It would destroy nature wholesale. In addition the destruction of vast number of trees would render the Governments credibility regarding trying to reduce global warming and carbon sequestration as a great big joke,
For Gods sake ditch the damn project once and for all and use the money saved for the benefit of so many other vastly more worthy causes.
I would love to see this ridiculous project buried, but, if it is so important to shave of a few minutes journey time to the midlands, then why not just do that. Bury it. Much more expensive in money, much cheaper ecologically.
I wonder what Johnson’s partner and father are advising him!
Chris Packham was very eloquent about HS2 on the R4 Today programme yesterday morning, one hour 17 minutes into the programme:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000c9lg
I think its ironic that as we aim to move to a low carbon future, there is opposition to HS2. Why? Well if we are to reduce car and lorry traffic, then we actually need to increase capacity and modernise our railway system, how else are people going to be able to move around the country in a way that is less damaging to the environment?
HS2 is more than just about reducing journey times, its about increasing the capacity on the current railway system so that there is capacity for more freight to be carried by rail, it will free up many train paths on the current overcrowded west coast mainline that can then be used by stopping passenger trains and freight trains.
A high speed rail network within this country could eliminate over 50% of internal aircraft flights as well further contributing to the reduction of CO2 emissions.
So what we have here is a campaign aimed at stopping the development of a mode of transport which is in fact what we need in the future to combat climate change! There is a big element of not seeing the bigger picture here.
A more sensible approach would be to work with HS2 to mitigate where possible the negative effects of building the line. We are decades behind the rest of Europe in realising the benefits of a modern efficient and non polluting high speed railway system.
It strikes me that many of those opposing the project would not be so keen if doing so was to impact negatively on their ability to travel and yet again we have an example of narrow thinking and opposition because there is no understanding of why its being proposed and a very narrow view being taken of “conservation”.
It reminds me of the days of those tree dwellers that opposed road building, ultimately the roads got built and the impact on the general public was minimal. We have to be smarter than this and work with society to achieve a better future. Emotional opposition against a project that will have a long lasting benefit for the country and the environment as a whole is counter productive.
Matthew – thank you for putting that point of view. There is, of course, a lot in what you say but there are at least a couple of snags with it.
First, many did work with HS2 to modify the route and the impact of the development and failed just about completely to mitigate its impacts – so they are then left to fight it at the end because it would not be changed at the beginning. Suggesting that it might be made a little bit better in future is not born out by the experience of trying to make it better in the past. We should be able to do much better than this.
Second, I think that you might struggle to make the case that if we have this amount of money to spend on transport to deliver such important aims then this is the best way to spend it. The argument that there is some good in it is nowhere near the case that it is a very good way to deliver such good.
I agree that the cost of civil engineering projects seems to be in-ordinarily expensive. Even the cost of extending station platforms by a 100 metres or so seems to run into millions., but then the price of such projects seems to be incomprehensible these days. In addition to the expense, key projects seem to take years to come to fruition, in fact longer than when the railways were originally built mainly by hand! (And they were equally opposed then by many, so not much changes!).
I don’t disagree that there could and should be better ways of designing these projects, but the fact is we are where we are and this country has a history of mismanaging or being lukewarm about crucial infrastructure projects.
The failure on the part of those managing HS2 to mitigate its effects and remember a high speed rail links footprint is far less than an equivalent motorway, is regrettable but criticism surely be aimed at the management of the project rather than the project itself?
The criticism of HS2 is based on the untruth that there is no requirement for it, that its simply a way of getting to Birmingham 20 minutes quicker, when actually its not, its about creating extra capacity, if even 10% of existing road freight and passenger traffic switched to rail it could not cope.
The criticism of the cost benefit analysis of French TGV routes is interesting, I guess you can spin cost benefits analysis anyway you like, the facts are however, that environmentally, they have significantly reduced internal air travel within France as indeed has HS1 between the UK and France.
The fact is though that without HS2 and I hope other ongoing high speed rail projects then the country will grind to a halt. The big picture environmentally is that reducing road and plane travel has got to be the aim and HS2 and the high speed rail projects that will follow on are crucial to this aim.
Unless one is going to fundamentally change the political mechanisms in this country and good luck with that after the election results last week, then this protest is going to fall on deaf ears. Outside the relatively small sphere of environmentalists, the vast majority of the population are not engaged and an approach which demands that the project should stop because it will destroy ancient woodlands is not going to gain much traction.
Far better to continue to influence the way these projects are planned and managed going forward, use the evidence to demonstrate how things could have been done differently, challenge the thinking of the engineers, project managers and politicians whilst understanding that HS2 is necessary and actually has wider environmental benefits.
It is so easy to point blank oppose something, especially if one does not think that it will be of personal benefit. More so whilst hypocritically swanning around the country in cars, buying cheap goods transported by HGV’s (which certainly don’t pay their true costs for roads) and generally enjoying the fruits of the economy that is reliant upon such infrastructure.
A well reasoned argument and correct that the purpose is increasing capacity rather than the much-used reduction of journey time.
However, the assumption that we will continue to consume all that freight is questionable if we are determined to reduce our carbon footprint and the reality of global warming begins to force our hand to do so.
I may be mistaken but my understanding is that although the Newbury bypass was built, the protest has prevented any further such developments taking place.
There’s a really fundamental issue here: engineers keep getting into trouble because they decide on a project and then try to blast it through regardless. That is what happened with onshore wind – all they were bothered about was whether they could connect to the grid and then employed consultants to buy their way through problems – landscape, biodiversity, too close to peoples houses etc. And in the end they lost – which wasn’t good because we should have onshore wind, but was right the way they were behaving. The same with HS2 and with the Environment Agencies continuing addiction to hard defences and resistance to landscape solutions.
Just in case there is any doubt, these ancient woods really are irreplaceable – you can recreate a reed bed with most of its species (Ham Wall, Lakenheath) but don’t be fooled by translocation of AW – they are no more than a pastiche of the original. Alongside this great initiative its worth noting the fantastic campaign the Woodland Trust have been running to save the HS2 woods.
The Cost Benefit Analysis didn’t stack up years ago, when I looked at some of the (many) EIA documents. Now it is completely shot given the likely build costs. Simply a white elephant project – a seemingly simple (political) solution to a difficult problem of modernising our railway system. Also think West Coast mainline upgrade fiasco overseen by DfT ; think poor urban commuters; think increased cost of Crossrail and the vast public subsidy / debt of TGV in France etc. More and better trains yes, HS2 no thanks.
Yes projects have been expensive or badly planned. That does not mean they aren’t required. You cannot create the additional capacity required on existing rail routes, you have to take out fast trains to increase paths for freight. Faster trains reduces the demand for internal air travel.
Without HS2 and connecting routes you cannot have more trains QED!
Our farm has been destroyed in the name of progress, it will be 6 years on 28th March since our land was compulsory purchased to dual the A30 .We still have not had the land handed back or compensation for all the damage that has happened due to incompetent workmanship. It has been a disaster, the top soil was taken away and the ground compacted with the rubbish that came from different sites now the water run off floods our lane and fields. Be very sure you have everything in writing my husband is 87 and heartbroken that his jewel in the crown has been ruined Dawn Gibson