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22 Sep 1999
Prince Charles has today piled pressure on Tony Blair to introduce new laws to protect the UK's finest wildlife areas, Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) by calling for 'tougher safeguards' in a message to a conference celebrating 50 years of landscape protection in Britain.
The Government has been under pressure to live up to its Manifesto promise to improve SSSI protection - SSSIs and National Parks are 50 years old this year. In a message to the conference Prince Charles made a clear statement supporting the call for new laws,identifying tougher safeguards as the way to tackle problems such as intensive agriculture and inappropriate development.
Matt Phillips of Friends of the Earth said:
“The Prince has hit the nail on the head. Over 300 SSSIs suffer damage
every year and the problem is safeguards for their protection are far
too weak - our wildlife is suffering, as the Prince highlights, a death
by a thousand cuts. The Government has come up with some good proposals,
it's time they were made law. The Prince's intervention puts pressure
on the Prime Minister to introduce a wildlife bill this year.”
The Prince said:
“Perhaps this is a good moment to reflect on the fate of all those
other special areas of our counryside which do not enjoy such protection.
In such a crowded island, our landscape -and the incredible diversity
of wildlife it supports - will always be under resssure from insensitive
and inappropriate development, intensive agricultural and forestry practices,road-building
and a host of other activties which, while they may individually seem
reasonable, have a devastating cumulative effect. There is no simple
answewr to these problems, other than to seek tougher safeguards for
the areas of special interest and to keep reminding ourselves of the
price we pay for development.”
Contact details:
Friends of the Earth
26-28 Underwood St.
LONDON
N1 7JQ
Tel: 020 7490 1555
Fax: 020 7490 0881
Web: www.foe.co.uk/feedback.html
Media team
