#I 1: -

I would advise you all to research the biodiversity of heathland. Heathland is one of the worlrds rarest environments - even more rare than rainforest. The fact that Hartlebury is isolated makes it even more important that the habitat is maintained as heath and that succession is arrested and preferably reversed. I suggest research includes visits to Highgate Common, where lots of work has been carried out to restore the heatland & its very rare flora & fauna. The soil scraping so deriided by the action group is not to check on the progress as has been suggested, but the scrapes are to assist the survival of the many [ more than 100] varieties of solitary & mining bees that heathland supports.

I am a dog owner & will point out that we have choices about where we exercise our pets, unfortunately, heathland species can only exist on heathland. Scrub destroys the habitat & must be controlled, or do the present users of the Common want their children to be denied the opportunity to do likewise?

#66: Dingle - Re: hands off hartlebury common

To say that heathland is rarer than rain forest is purely a cheap imotive comment and does not really mean anything. The Rain forest is under threat becuase of tree felling and land clearence. Critisism of course is selctive.

Heathland is rare because our NATURAL countryside heals itself wherever it can and has.

With reference to Highgate, again you miss the point, the flora and fauna are rare beacause this habitat is not natural, a case of the horse driving the cart on policy.

The fact that Hartlebury is isolated shows what a insignificant anomally it is. It's a joke, on the WCC website they seriously claim that "Malvern Hills is the only place where this moth exists. Wyre forest is the only place to find this butterfly" It is an insult to peoples intteligence and misleading. It is this sort of nonsense that exposes the barefaced deceptions and lack of common sense. These species exist also in pockets of countryside not accessible to anyone. I have a friend a farmer. He has the biggest herd of rare breeds cattle in the midlnds 600. He has created pools, marsh and bog on land around his farm. He is a keen naturalist and unsung hero. There are a lot of farmers like him and land owners. There are also areas of farm land and countryside that are inaccesible.

Efforts should be concentrated on areas which have an natural inclination to be heath, if there are any. You make the succession by trees sound as if it is toxic algae bloom, or some freak of nature taking place.

With a population of over 100 species of bees, does it not strike you as something of a success since the common has been so woefully neglected.

Work that is being carried out is already damaging. The extremeley unstable sand - soil is being eroded by rains and wind.

An area adjacent to Pooland Nursery was cleared of trees in an experiment orchestrated by Liz Nether of WCC to show how heather would colonise the area. The trouble was that it also an area which had a large number of common lizards. I know because I would sit with my children and photograph them. Since the clearing work, no heather and the lizards have dissapeared.

The common exists as a diverse, interdependent ecosystem, the argument is that the nunbers of the rare so called heathland species can be scaled up by orchestrated enviroment bias. This justifies this carnage

This work is carried out beacuse of the money on offer from the goverment who in turn recieve it from Life+ nature, the cash clearing house working within the framework of the The Rio de Janeiro Convention on biological diversity.

You can read the wording of the document here http://www.cbd.int/convention/text/

The Rio conference dealt mostly with the burden placed on nature by extraction of natural resourses and humankinds imposition generally creating monosystems. So therefore, the aim of restoration to re-inhabite and restore enviroments and to maintain bio diversity is subsequent to the above.

Reading the document, whilst it does not specifically prohibit what is being done to places like Hartlebury Common, I can see with all the incentives on offer, why a goverment could be keen to exploit loopholes. I believe that the true spirit of the Rio accord has been deliberatley misinterpretated and the whole case for creating an unatural enviroment is stretching the imagination somewhat. I beleive it is a cynical excercise where the welfare of the whole mechanism is more cared for than the countryside it is supposed to protect. I belive that money and jobs are the reason for this work and that people have become mesmerised by this "Fashion"

Apart from that, the enclosure IS illegal, but dont take my word for it, have a look at this but I suspect you already have

http://oss.panther.webexpectations.net/concern-about-hartlebury-common-fencing-plan-%E2%80%93-7-january-2009concern-about-hartlebury-common-fencing-plan-%E2%80%93-7-january-2009/

http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/rare_precious.htm

I believe the literal wording of the statement means bio diversity as indiginous to our countries and NATURAL to those places.

Steve McCarron