Teesmouth Bird Club

Although out of area this is important. On 30th Mar the "Brusselton Incline Group" began clearance work on the West incline. This clearance work however is total. Every bus, shrub or tree is being removed to leave a desolate, barren wasteland. This small patch was an important habitat consisting of mature (over 100 years old) hawthorns, elders and willow and Ash etc. All are being removed to ground level then treated to kill off. Many common birds and wildlife depended on this small patch for breeding and food etc and some of our scarcer summer visitors nested here regularly, Willow Warbler, Lesser and Common Whitethroat among them.Invertebrates included Red Admiral, Peacock, Painted Lady, Wall Brown and Skippers. The Mature Hawthorns and Elder provided an important food source for winter birds (Fieldfare, Redwing etc). All this will be gone in a matter of a few days and the clinical farmland and minima size hedges (1.5mtr) will be all that remains. Although we cannot now stop this we can at least show our disgust by e-mailing the " Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport" ( DCMS) who granted the consent and Mr Rob Young of English Heritage, who is directly responsible for this debacle and hopefully we can ensure that it doesn't happen again elsewhere. Some photo's are added

Surely it is illegal to carry out vegetation clearance on such a scale during the bird nesting season.

Unfortunately it's not an agricultural hedge and the Sec of State DCMS (Mariah Miller, rings a bell) has given English Heritage consent to go ahead. The reason given was that the trees were damaging the monument. The Mon is over 200 yrs old and has never been maintained since it shut down in 1830. So water and frost have nowt to do with it now has it?