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The rape and pillage of our green and pleasant land

As part of the Morning Star's campaign to save our rivers an indignant PETER FROST reports from a river bank in Herefordshire designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Special Area of Conservation

WITHIN days of the Tory government’s announcement that it will replace the set-aside huge payment to already rich farmers and landowners with even more money, supposedly to re-wild our countryside, at least one landowner has shown his total contempt for any kind of wildlife and landscape protection.

A huge section, well over a mile, of the beautiful Herefordshire River Lugg has been bulldozed. In a matter of hours this act of extreme and criminal vandalism has changed the Lugg from a beautiful river meandering through flowery water meadows into a straightened and re-profiled hard-edged sterile canal.

Ancient bank side trees have been grubbed out and burnt. Many riverside habitats completely obliterated. In just a few hours the bulldozer swept away part of a mature landscape that had taken many centuries to develop.

With it went habitats that had supported common and rare species that had made the Lugg their home. They included reed banks, gravels and beds of water crowfoot that were home to crayfish, otters and salmon, lampreys and dragonflies and a host of other rare river plants and animals.

How the government reacts to this criminal act will be a test case for Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Environment Secretary, former Ukip member George Eustice. Will they strengthen wildlife protection or continue to support their rich landowning mates as the rape and pillage of our green and pleasant land goes on?

The stripping and straightening on the River Lugg has not just destroyed stretch of approximately 1.5km of the river but downstream of the actual vandalism one of the most beautiful and important rivers in the UK has been intentionally ruined with a massive deterioration in water quality.

The river Lugg is such an important home for wildlife that it is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), and as a Special Area of Conservation (SAC).  

Its banks and flood meadows are home to some of Britain’s most beautiful and most threatened wild plants including narrow-leaved water dropwort. Here you will also find some of the biggest stands of snake’s head fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris) whose nodding, pink-and-purple-chequered flowers draw me and many other visitors in spring.

I need to declare an interest here. The snake’s head fritillary is my favourite wildflower. I grow the bulbs in my garden and above my desk hangs Rennie Mackintosh’s pencil and watercolour sketch of these fascinating and delicate fritillary blooms.

These Lugg meadows, as they are known locally, are unique. They date back to the time before the Domesday Book. Lugg Meadow is one of the most important surviving Lammas Meadows — a meadows in common ownership opened for communal grazing on Lammas Day, August 1.

Today they are home to over a score of grass species and some rare and threatened ground-nesting birds, notably the curlew.

The Lugg, one of more than 350 British rivers, flows from its source in Powys, Wales through Herefordshire before meeting the River Wye just outside Hereford. 

Statutory agencies such as Natural England, the Environment Agency, Forestry Commission and Herefordshire Council all had a statutory duty to protect the River Lugg from harm. However Tory funding cuts to all of those bodies has made it more and more difficult to make serious environmental protection a reality.

The illegal dredging and straightening will speed the flow and have a drastic effect on water quality. With no stabilising vegetation, any heavy rainfall and rise in river level and speed will mean massive erosion of the banks with a great amount of soil washed into the river along with agricultural pollutants such as phosphates and pesticides. This soil smothers the riverbed for miles, destroying fish spawn, invertebrates and their eggs.

The 45-mile River Lugg has its source near Llangynllo in Radnorshire, Wales where it is known as the Afon Llugwy. Its name in Welsh means bright stream.

It flows through the border town of Presteigne and then through Herefordshire to the south of Leominster, where it meets a tributary, the River Arrow. Nine miles further on at Mordiford it feeds into the River Wye.

Despite attempts at building locks the Lugg was never a satisfactory commercial waterway. Navigation probably ceased in the early 19th century. Early industry extracted water and mills used the ample flow for power.

It is still sometimes navigated by small boats but can be very dangerous when in flood. Today the river is popular with both canoeists and anglers.

As soon as the presence of the bulldozer was reported police and Environment Agency staff moved in to stop further damage being done.

One early witness on the scene was Guy Linley-Adams, a lawyer for the charity Salmon and Trout Conservation, who lives nearby.
He immediately called for prosecution of those responsible: “This is one of the most egregious acts of ecological vandalism that I have seen in 25 years of working on rivers in the UK,” he said. “I have been on site and I am shaking with anger at what has been done to my local river.

“There can be no excuse if the perpetrator is not now prosecuted to the fullest extent possible. His financial assets should also be taken to pay to restore the river, a restoration that will take decades.”

Dave Throup, the area environment manager for the Environment Agency (EA), said: “We are treating this very seriously along with Natural England and the Forestry Commission, who have taken immediate action in an attempt to prevent any further works at the site.”

Throup tweeted: “14 specialist officers from the Environment Agency, Natural England, Forestry Commission, West Mercia police and Herefordshire council now on site gathering information and evidence.”

Helen Stace, the chief executive of the Herefordshire Wildlife Trust, said: “A large stretch of one of the UK’s most important rivers, the Lugg, has been devastated with dire consequences for wildlife and water quality downstream. This is a tragedy.

“This is a crime against the environment. Swift action needs to be taken and we want to see the authorities investigate the matter swiftly. We expect this case to be dealt with in a serious and robust manner and any resulting prosecution should act as a deterrent to prevent anyone committing this type of crime ever again. We will also be calling for restoration of the river to its natural channel.”

TV gardener Monty Don, who lives in near Leominster, told local newspaper the Hereford Times: “It breaks my heart but is all too typical of the ignorance, arrogance and sheer wanton destruction of those privileged to care for our countryside.”

Herefordshire Wildlife Trust told the Morning Star: “This assault on the river was not the work of an idle whim, requiring as it did the action of a 16-tonne bulldozer.

“The work would have been planned and will have had a considerable cost attached. The landowners bordering this stretch of the river would have been well aware of the SSSI status of the river.

“This was a deliberate flouting of laws designed to protect our most precious wildlife. The vandalism was a contravention of the Wildlife and Countryside Act and other legislation. It should have required consent from the Environment Agency, as well as planning consent, at the very least.”

Chief executive of The Wildlife Trusts, Craig Bennett, told the Star: “The government has promised to transform our environmental governance as we leave the EU and for the UK to be a world leader in environmental protection.

“Devastating incidents such as this one will be a vital test case as we come to the end of the transition period for the government's ambition to develop a world leading environment enforcement structure.

“Unfortunately, the government has so far failed to live up to this standard, with poor resourcing leaving Natural England unable to properly monitor and protect our most important wild places.

Herefordshire Wildlife Trust has urged that the landowner responsible be prosecuted. Police have already started enquiries – they must end in serious penalties for those landowning vandals responsible.

PANEL

Why our British rivers are so important

Britain’s rivers are one of our most important landscape features. Not only do they help make the British countryside so picturesque and vibrant, they also provide fresh water for drinking and farming.

Larger waterways have provided transport routes and power generation for riverside industry and business over centuries.

Some of our most beautiful rivers are chalk streams. Their pure, clear, constant water from underground chalk aquifers and springs, flowing across flinty gravel beds, make them perfect sources of clean water – and ideal for lots of wild creatures to breed and thrive. We’re lucky because the majority of the world’s chalk streams are found in England.

Today far too many of our waterways have been overused and undervalued. Drained almost dry in places, and polluted in others.
Here are some of the main threats to our rivers:-
■ Straightening and canalising rivers disrupts the migration routes for fish and disrupts habitats.
■ Excessive water extraction for human or agricultural use shrinks and degrades habitats.
■ Runoff from agricultural and urban areas poisons water quality.
■ Draining of riverside wetlands floodplains and water meadows for housing and other development depletes wildlife habitats.
■ Overexploitation and pollution threaten groundwater supplies.
■ Invasion of exotic species can harm native animals and plants.
■ Climate change is leading to devastating floods and droughts.
 
Less than a fifth of England’s rivers are healthy, and increasing climate change is putting more and more pressure on them. That’s why all our rivers, not just the Lugg, need our help and strict protection from the government and the law.

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