Hunger Strike outside Natural England’s Leeds Office
Following the devastating flooding in Hebden Bridge and Mytholmroyd during Storm Ciara, Dongria Kondh, co-ordinator of Treesponsibility, will be going on hunger strike outside Natural England’s Leeds office, at Lateral, 8 City Walk, Leeds LS11 9AT, from 8.00 a.m. on Thursday 20 th February. The hunger strike is in protest at Natural England’s failure to investigate seemingly unconsented works and moorland burning on a big grouse shooting estate above Hebden Bridge.
Evidence was presented to Natural England back in August 2019 by local groups Ban the Burn and Calderdale Wildlife Group. Despite committing in October 2019 to investigate these examples of apparent mismanagement (in breach of the 2017-42 Walshaw Moor Estate Restoration Plan), Natural England appears to have done nothing.
There is a huge amount of well-founded local concern, informed by reliable hydrology studies, that upland mismanagement in the area is contributing to the severity of flooding in the valley during heavy rainfall events.
Dongria Kondh said: ‘Local community groups like Treesponsibility and Slow the Flow Calderdale are doing their best to reduce flood risk, but unless the large landowners are held to account our efforts will be in vain.
Natural England either can’t or won’t act as a regulator for landscape management in the uplands. That’s an important matter for communities who depend on well-managed catchments to reduce their vulnerability to flooding, and it is also a matter of public accountability – rich landowners are receiving large amounts of taxpayer funding with little or no monitoring. After campaigning for better upland managment in the Hebden Water catchment for nearly eight years, my patience has run out – which is why I decided that a hunger strike was the only remaining course of action.‘.
Ros Berrington, from the Upper Calderdale Wildlife Network said: ‘Immediately after the severe flooding in the Upper Calder Valley due to Storm Ciara, we again wrote to Natural England demanding an update on their investigations. Their reply on 14th February excused their failure to start the investigation on the grounds they were waiting for additional information from us regarding many apparently unconsented vehicle tracks on Walshaw Moor Estate, which we drew to their attention in separate correspondence. However they did not contact us to ask for specific details of tracks that are appearing on the estate and it was the first we’d heard that they were delaying their investigation into our initial complaint until we had sent them this additional information.’.
In a separate development PCS, the NE trade union, is balloting its members for strike action.
https://www.pcs.org.uk/news/vote-yes-in-the-pcs-natural-england-ballot to campaign against low wages and chronic underfunding (NE has lost 64% of its budget in the last decade).
Dongria Kondh added: ‘My hunger strike is not aimed at individual NE workers, who often struggle with unmanageable workloads, and I definitely agree with the union’s statement that “NE needs to be properly funded to meet its environmental protection obligations and to be able to actively participate in Defra’s 25-year plan to improve the environment.” The present situation has to change, and change fast, if our landscapes and local communites are to increase their resilience to accelerating climate change.‘.
ENDS
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This will get more dislikes than I’ve ever received but…..
Why announce this one hour before the due start? Why give the police advanced warning so they can prevent it?
The 7 am time was chosen by the people issuing the press release who, presumably include Dongria Kondh. I presume that they hope to attract some publicity at the very start of her protest and so had to release it before the start?
Good for her. I didn’t hear moor burning mentioned once in the mainstream (!) media over the course of the floods.
I hope this comes to a very speedy resolution for Dongria’s benefit as well as for the people of Hebden Bridge. It’s deplorable that after all the hard and progressive work that Treesponsibility and Slow the Flow have been doing for years it’s come to this due to the utter selfishness of others. Hopefully at long last this subject will get the media attention it has deserved from the beginning. The strike action will be welcome too, again what alternative do the genuine conservationists in NE have?
One cannot but applaud such commitment to getting the message out and engendering action to start to help solve the flooding in the Calder Valley exacerbated by the mismanagement of grouse moor peatlands in the headwaters. NE are grossly under resourced but even so they continue to do nothing in the face of breaches of an agreement with the owners.
Here in Mid Wales its raining heavily (AGAIN!) and blowing a gale so I am deciding whether to go do the weekly shop never mind stand out in the weather on hunger strike, I am in awe of that commitment.
Sadly not too sure what wouldn’t get done if NE went on strike here. Unfortunately they seem to have little public support from people I speak to & much of the recent management works has been through funded contracts not staff.
Intriguingly (maybe) the impending action had not made MSM.
That’s not to say there aren’t some good staff in the organisation.
Perhaps their supporters in the Lord’s might persuade their colleagues to redirect their £25 per day pay rise my fag packet calculation arrives at c. £4m That ought to help the workforce (maybe not directors & senior managers)
Maybe we should join it, Mark – probably do us both good !
On a more serious note I was reflecting on the fact, the Forestry Commission practically demonstrated some of the things that can be done to slow the flow, with a major LIFE funded project to restore dug out rivers to their natural course in the New Forest and Wild Ennerdale in Cumbria, where letting the river Liza go wild is credited with the only catchment not to flood in the flood-prone region around the North Lakes and Carlisle.
What is scary is that both initiatives are now nearly 20 years old.
All the more frustrating when you realise the 2005 Carlisle flood cost over £400,000,000, and it’s hardly been a one off. If people think those treeless, sheep grazed hills are a beautiful landscape they need to be asked if they find piles of sodden carpets, knackered tellies, fridges and washing machines stacked outside a house after the floodwaters have receded pretty too. That’s the real cost of those ‘beautiful’ hills on top of the public money spent to make and keep them flood friendly.
Well, this government is quite happy to watch it’s citizens die.
Good luck!
Be quite clear, the Government since 2010 has continuously and persistently degraded NE’s effectiveness. Perhaps some blame lies with management – from the start it has never been a particularly happy organisation and the turnover of ‘directors’ has been ludicrous. But that has only assisted the Government’s intent and that the organisation is not respected or supported by many people will be music to Ministers ears and encourage them to further the further emasculation of NE. And there isn’t much evidence that their new chair has really got the message.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/20/grouse-moors-owners-threaten-government-with-legal-action
Defra needs to call the MA’s bluff — now.
If ordinary people on the right side of the argument go to the courts to test the law we get slagged of by Tim Bonner and his mates.
If the privileged few don’t like the direction of travel they threaten their Government with legal action.
You couldn’t make it up.
Keep subscribing to Wild Justice – I will.
NE like SNH have to bow to their masters the government. And the Tory administration is full of wealthy landowners or at least their supporters. Grouse shooting is more important than people or the environment to this miserable lot so good luck to this lady but I think she is a voice in the proverbial wilderness.
By yesterday afternoon Natural England had agreed to promptly investigate the sphagnum burning and seemingly unconsented infrastructure we reported to them last summer/autumn, to visit the sites and to meet with Ban the Burn/Calderdale Wildlife Group mid March to discuss the outcome of their investigation. We’ll done and thank you, Dongria.
Well done Dongria
Of Mark’s question about trust …. let’s hope they [NE] keep their word and meet, more importantly that they then follow up on the usual flannel with ACTIONS that benefit people and wildlife:) The issue for me, is, will their masters allow them to act to deliver the necessary?
So, keep up the media pressure as collective community conservation spotlight can shine (thank you Dongria) into the mirky mire of management failure:)
Now is the time to be supporting staff at NE. Conservationists who have now been through pay cuts for 10 years, massive reorganisations and changes in policies and increases in day to day workloads. Staff without experience in some topics being asked to work on those areas. Computer systems which dont work and makes working more inefficient. Technology which is ancient. Site protection nearly abandoned as “hubs” who dont know and may not have even set foot in the site tasked to somehow offer advice. 1 in 4 staff on sick leave because of mental illness. Time to spread the word and garner support. Enough criticism.