LORDS LOG-JAM "DISASTER FOR WILTSHIRE WILDLIFE"

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust is warning that any delay in passing the Countryside and Rights of Way (CROW) Bill will have dire consequences for wildlife in the county. 

Recent press reports have suggested that the Bill faces delaying tactics in the House of Lords, where its access provisions have proved controversial. This could lead to its being squeezed out of a tightly-packed parliamentary timetable for the current session, which ends in October. It would then have to start from scratch after the Queen's Speech in November 2001.

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust has been talking to local MPs to try to persuade them of the CROW Bill's urgent importance for wildlife.

A key provision of the Bill is much-needed legal protection for Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), of which there are around 120 in Wiltshire, ranging from sites such as Haydon Meadow in Swindon to Salisbury Plain and rivers such as the Kennet. Despite their national significance, SSSIs have suffered dramatically in recent years from damage or neglect. 

Recent statistics reveal that 40 per cent of England's SSSIs, once rich in plants and animals, are in poor or declining conditions.

The Wiltshire Wildlife Trust is urging the government not to drop the CROW Bill. Year after year the countryside is damaged through poor management, pollution and development. The Trust is appealing to its members and the concerned public to contact their Members of Parliament and ask them to write to the Prime Minister, urging him to keep the Bill on track.

"Wildlife urgently needs better protection", said the Trust's director, Dr Gary Mantle MBE. "If the Bill is dropped, a whole range of threatened plants and animals such as the water vole, the curlew and the brown hairstreak butterfly will suffer."

Once lost, the special wildlife and nature conservation interest of a site is difficult and sometimes impossible to restore. The Wildlife Trust is concerned that a piece of legislation enjoying widespread, cross-party support might fall at the last hurdle: "Without legal protection our hands are tied. We cannot effectively protect our wildlife against wanton and wilful damage."

"These sites should have been protected years ago. Now we are faced with the fact that even the protection offered by the CROW Bill, which as far as wildlife in general is concerned is too little, too late, may not even see the light of day."

The Bill is tabled for discussion by the Committee of the Whole House in the House of Lords on September 27. 

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