I am seeking judicial review of an agreement made by government agency Natural England that will allow a landowner to damage protected habitat in West Yorkshire.

Natural England, the government agency that is supposed to protect wildlife, has signed an agreement with a Yorkshire landowner that allows protected peatland habitat to be damaged.  The plan allows the building of a 5-kilometre track through blanket bog at Walshaw Moor near Hebden Bridge, and also permits the vegetation to be burned to a damaging degree. Natural England isn’t doing its job properly and I believe we can get this agreement thrown out.

The technical aspect of this case is that Natural England has assessed the impacts of this agreement very badly, in my view. A few years ago Natural England refused the landowner permission to build a very similar track and yet this time our conservation agency has simply caved in!  Many other agreements are in the pipeline across the English uplands and unless we draw a line in the sand (or in fact in the peat) right now more sites will be damaged and more wildlife will be lost.

Walshaw Moor is part of an area with the highest European conservation designations because of its wildlife and its important bog habitats: it is a Special Protection Area for Birds and a Special Area of Conservation under the EU Birds and Habitats Directives.  If our statutory agencies don’t ensure the protection of such places then what on earth are they for?

I've got some great lawyers together to argue our case but I need your help to pay the court costs, the costs if we lose (nothing is certain) and at least some of our lawyers' costs (they have kindly agreed to work at heavily discounted rates).  The first stage is to raise £5000 to start the process rolling but we need to raise another £21,000 to see this through to the end.  Please help start things off by donating today - right now please, if you can.

Let’s make Natural England work to protect England’s nature!

I'll give regular updates on how things are going - here and on my blog Standing up for Nature. If we raise more money than is needed, the additional funds will be held for up to a year and spent on other legal work to benefit upland nature conservation or other environmental causes.  Thank you.

Photo credit: Bob Berzins