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Regular readers will know of my growing cynicism around certain conservation charities, especially the single-issue ones like the Woodland Trust who play fast and loose with facts and deliberately exaggerate and distort the effects of HS2 on the environment. These organisations are doing the wider environmental movement no favours at all. People like me should be their natural allies (and donors) but I find there’s now a growing list of them I won’t touch with a bargepole and certainly wouldn’t dream of helping financially. Here’s the latest.
Tomorrow, HS2 is due to take possession of land on the edges of the Calvert Jubilee nature reserve at Calvert, Buckinghamshire to begin the early stages of constructing HS2. The reserve is bordered by the former Great Central main line on the East and the route of East-West rail to the North.
Here was the reaction on Twitter of Estelle Bailey, Chief Exec of the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust who manage the site in response to unrelated news about the IPA…
“Destroy” the nature reserve? That sounds serious! There’s only one tiny problem, it’s complete cobblers, as looking at a (publicly available) design map of the area shows. Calvert Jubilee is at the bottom of the map (link here)
When challenged about her comments and on being shown the above map, this was Ms Bailey’s response.
A “heck of a chunk”? That’s emotive nonsense and hardly a recognised measurement! The map shows it’s also completely untrue. The HS2 line itself passes the edge of the reserve in a deep cutting to cut down on noise and where that edge is on the nature reserve side the cutting will be constructed of vertical piles to minimise land take. The real impact on the reserve is a small auto transformer feeder station and service road, along with a landscaped cutting to drop the existing road under the E-W railway line, plus a narrow road to allow access to the inverted siphon pipes connecting the existing lake with the new ponds on the opposite side of HS2. “Heck of a chunk” Give over!
Here’s how the area looks now on Google maps.
Notice that for the little bit of the reserve that’s taken there’s massive compensation for wildlife in the fact that the monoculture farmland to the right of the railway on Google maps becomes a huge area of new planting which is ringed by ponds, meaning there’s no net loss of biodiversity. Exactly the opposite!
Of course, this doesn’t stop some of the local Nimbys bemoaning what they say is ‘irreplaceable’ loss, but there’s several huge holes in this argument.
For a start, Calvert Jubilee is a brownfield site. It used to be a brickworks! Calvert brickworks was a massive undertaking and major employer that finally closed its doors in 1991. The website of the Great Moor sailing club which occupies one of the five former clay pits that’s now called Grebe lake contains the history of the site, mentioning that “Pit No.2 was formally opened as a nature reserve on 20th March 1978 by Sir Ralph Verney, a local landowner, and owner of the nearby Claydon House (now run by the National Trust). This 50-acre lake with surrounding 30 acres of land is now run by the Berks, Bucks, and Oxon Naturalist Trust”.
So, this 80 acre site has only existed as a nature reserve for just 42 years, in which time nature has completely reclaimed it – which says a lot about how resilient nature really is. Not bad considering some conservationists insist it’s ‘irreplaceable’ once gone – as it was when the clay pits were dug and the brickworks was in operation (from 1902 -1991). The work HS2 will be doing will be far more sensitively managed and the disturbance it will cause will heal a lot quicker – as we can see from the experiences of High Speed 1 in Kent and Essex.
It’s the doom-laden predictions of ecological disaster by conservationists opposed to Hs2 that really get my back up. Calvert has proved they’re nonsense once and it will do so again. It’s these predictions of disaster that do the conservation movements credibility no good at all. Yes, we should all do our best to ensure these projects have the best environmental mitigation possible, but when you get such dishonest claims bandied around, it really doesn’t help anyone. Here’s an example from Facebook posted by one of the locals.
The only catastrophe here is the use of language! They’ve seen the plans, they know the plans, yet they still peddle scaremongering like this. I’ve been critical of HS2 Ltd’s PR and public engagement policies in the past but I’m using these as example of what they’re up against. No mater how open and informative HS2 is, when you’re up against people who deliberately distort and exaggerate like this, you’re facing an uphill struggle – especially when one of these people is the Chief Executive of a charity who supposedly has a professional duty to tell the truth!
HS2 Ltd have countered this misinformation before. They’re quoted in response to yet more scaremongering in this article in the local Bucks Herald newspaper, where it turns out that the ‘heck of a chunk’ is actually just 20%, leaving 80% untouched!
Of course, there’s another irony here. The old railway line that Hs2 will be reusing at this point is the route of the former Great Central. The very line some of them tout as an ‘alternative’ to HS2 that should be reopened instead. Only they don’t seem that keen on the idea when it becomes a reality! Is there any finer example of hypocrisy?
Let’s see if tomorrows threatened protests actually materalise….
I’ve a favour to ask…
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Thank you!
Paul Bigland 
Thanks Paul for repeatedly shining the light on these sad, self-deluding individuals, luring other naive people astray. They are no better than lying politicians. The light you shine shows their empty words and actions as they really are.
Thanks Mike. I feel really sad that I have to criticise charities in this way but it’s clear that some of them are blatantly scaremongering for their own ends.
20% is a “heck of a chunk”, though, isn’t it?
it’s clear that you want your new train set and enjoy belittling those that don’t.
No. 20% is not a ‘heck of a chunk’ when that means 80% is untouched and the only area affected is a narrow strip along one side. Oh, and the fact far more is replaced than is removed. But thanks for popping in to help illustrate by point about the exaggeration, dishonesty and scaremongering of so-called ‘conservationists’ and why I’ve so little time for many of these groups nowadays. You’re not part of the solution to climate-change, you’re part of the problem.
It really is though. I’m knocking 20% off your hourly rate. No problems I assume?
You don’t get to decide who is part of the problem and who is part of the solution.
Twenty percent isn’t insignificant.
If ‘only’ twenty percent of this nature reserve is lost and ‘only’ twenty percent of another say five nature reserves of the same size then that adds up to well the equivalent of one whole nature reserve. This in the already most nature depleted country in Europe.
I agree there is some exagerration and some one sided reporting from some charities (particularly the Woodland Trust) but someone has to stand up for biodiversity.
Juliet
http://craftygreenpoet.blogspot.com
Yes, 20% is insignificant – for several reasons. For a start, it’s not the main part of the nature reserve, it’s on the edge. There’s also far more land that’s rewilded (on the opposite side of the railway, what was monoculture farmland) than is taken by HS2, so there’s actually a net gain – not a loss. But that doesn’t suit the sanctuary because it’s not theirs! This is about BBOWT politiking more than the environment – and they’re being dishonest about it too.
That would still leave me with 80%, the vast majority of my income. I’d also be benefitting from the metaphorical new ‘income’ from all the extra ponds and planting on the other side of the railway.
But yes. I do get to decide who’s part of the problem, because I know those people who can’t see the woods for the trees and would leave us without the rail capacity to get modal shift from road/air to rail are exactly that. That’s you people.
Ok, let’s have the 20%. You can have the new income in several years / decades when it may or may not be on par with what you have lost.
Thank you for confirming your vastly over-inflated sense ofself importance.
What you will have ‘lost’ is painfully obvious from the Google maps. It’s mostly the formation of an old railway! You have no idea just how ridiculous you look to ordinary people. Ones who can weigh up the pros and cons and see the bigger picture rather than through a Nimby end of a local telescope.
It’s why you were always doomed to fail and HS2 is being built.
The thing that stands out for me is that the next time someone advances opening old railways as a more ecologically friendly alternative to HS2 this very example at Calvert is going to come back to bite them right on the arse.
Indeed! It’s classic anti HS2 hypocrisy from a few Nimbys. “We don’t need a new line, just reopen old ones instead” Govt: ‘OK then’. “No, not THAT one – it’s near me!”
More arrogance: claims to speak for the “ordinary people” in the same breath as dismissing their concerns
I leave the arrogance to a few Nimbys with on overwheening sense of entitlement that means they can’t deal in facts. You’ve had 10 years to stop HS2. You failed miserably. The attitude you display has a large part to play in that. No matter, it’s all over now. The ‘campaign’ against HS2 was always rather farcical, with a massive self-awareness deficit. Now HS2’s being built. All the bluster’s come to nothing…
Your standard fallback position: even more arrogance and massively incorrect assumptions. It’s unclear why you expect people to take you seriously
“Standard fallback position”, that would be phrases like “vested interests” and “fat cats railway”, not mention allegations of back handers and wildlife crimes to mention but two, none proven in any way at any time. Why is it that not one person opposed to HS2 can even try to mount a coherent and substantive argument against HS2 rather than regressing to hyperbole, insults and derision.
Indeed. It’s like a game of ‘Bullshit Bingo’. You know the same trite phrases will get trotted out as a smokescreen to try and hide the fact that the majority of the opposition to Hs2 comes down to one thing: Nimbyism. It’s just that sometimes they use green issues as a figleaf.
Grand (arrogant) statements not backed up.
I’m not surprised, this seems to be the most echo-ey chamber I’ve come across. Apologies for intruding on your bubble.
There is of course, as always, far more to this than meets the eye.
There will be a huge permanent ‘Infrastructure Maintenance’ depot (railway sidings with maintenance and repair equipment for the main line) which is planned to take most of the farmland South of Steeple Claydon across to the old Calvert clay pits. At the same time we look forward to the the reopening of the East-West line from Bletchley to Bedford. This line is initially intended to ferry material to the maintenance depot.
(Page 24, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/10250/hs2-imd.pdf)
This will have a far more significant effect on local residents than the minor disruptions planned for the brownfield sites round the old clay pit at Calvert where most of the protests are currently concentrated.
The protest group numbers less than 20 people, many of whom come in from areas far away from Buckinghamshire.
A greater acreage of land has been devoted to housebuilding in the village between 1988 – 2020 on farmland or allotments.
Given that the only major SSSI in the area is located some distance from the planned works I simply do not buy the conservation argument, particularly as the water fowl currently in residence will simply come back.
Many of my fellow locals are quite happy for the line to go ahead as in the long term it may reduce the number of domestic aircraft journeys. Now is the time to make the best of the opportunity and mitigate its effects where possible.