21 March 2008 - Norfolk Green Party is in support of the current campaign to prevent the woods at Hockham and Wretham from being cut down. The Forestry Commission is intending to allow that these trees be cut down so that a gravel extraction quarry can be built.
Today, Norfolk Greens are questioning why the Forestry Commission is allowing this mass-destruction of woodland to go ahead. Said Councillor Rupert Read, East Anglia's Green Party lead candidate for the European elections: "It seems to us that the Forestry Commission is in breach of their own mandate.
"According to their website, the Forestry Commission's mandate is to 'protect and expand Britain's forest and woodlands'. However, this proposal submitted for the Norfolk area would destroy huge amounts of trees: at Hockham 320 acres, at Billingford 305 acres, and at Harling 1,000 acres. Altogether, that's 1,625 acres of forestry or woodland lost forever. That is not a 'green' way to act!
"We believe that the Forestry Commission wants to cut the trees for two reasons. First of all they want to extract and profit from selling millions of tons of gravel and sand; and then potentially turning these quarries into waste landfill sites for years if not decades to come. And secondly because they have come under pressure from the government (their ultimate boss) to help meet the new housing growth requirements across Norfolk and have been forced to ignore their mandate as a result.
"This is wrong-headed policy-making of the first order. It is more vital than ever, with the threat of dangerous climate change looming, that we preserve all our precious forests. Money ought to be going into recycling initiatives; not into creating landfill sites!"
Councillor Chris Hull, Norfolk Green Party County Councillor, added: "I am deeply dismayed that the Forestry Commission is putting at risk such prime ecological treasures. We cannot simply keep responding to demand for quarrying at any cost, and we should certainly expect public bodies like the Forestry Commission to be doing their job of defending prime woodland like this.
"Hockham is designated as an EU Special Protection Area (SPA) and a UK Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Yet the Forestry Commission still propose to destroy acres of woodland by extracting 4 million tons of gravel, creating a hole big enough to swallow up 44,000 double decker buses! I will be pursuing this matter within the County Council, and seeking to put a stop to this."
For more information about the campaign, please visit www.hawitage.co.uk.