HS2 Cometh
‘HS2 cometh’ your caption stated in the May (2019) edition. I visited the Colne Valley Nature Reserves Harvil Road, UB9 6JW on the weekend of 27/28th April to see what ‘HS2 coming’ really means and it was truly disturbing.
Please go and see for yourselves, it’s only 20 minutes from Wendover.
The reserves are a 40 square mile site of special scientific interest being wetlands and woodlands. It is the ‘lungs of London’ and it is suffering due to the cancer of HS2.
Hillingdon Borough Council took the decision to ‘engage’ with HS2 to try and limit the damage done to the nature reserves, however, it is now clear that HS2 does not respect the engagement process.
It recently cut down 2000 trees leaving birds and bats disorientated and displaced, hedgehogs and other small mammals killed under contractor vehicles.
Rather than leave the fallen trees as cover for the wildlife and to allow overwintering bugs, insect, moths and butterflies to leave the tree bark, the trees were chipped into sawdust mountains. These hillocks of sawdust are clearly visible, see photos. A whole hillside has been cleared and more is to follow. See photos.
HS2 did this because they knew no-one would stop them. There was no proper ecology/environment assessment, no ecologist on site at the time, no licences or permits in place and NO ‘Notice to Proceed’ and NO respect for Hillingdon’s engagement process.
If Wendover believes that it will be afforded benefits by ‘engaging with HS2’ in order to lessen the destruction to our village and countryside please take another look at the photographs. They show utter brutal destruction of protected countryside – to a Council who engaged with them – Wendover and the Buckinghamshire countryside will experience the same.
I urge everyone to go on line to ‘Save the Colne Valley nature reserves, West London, from HS2’ and sign the petition.
Then perhaps we need to start a ‘Save Wendover Village from HS2’ petition?
Kind regards,
Ann Hayward
Wendover.