‘Don’t cut the life from our countryside’

RSPB takes spending cuts message to minister’s doorstep

 Don’t cut the life from our countryside – that is the message the RSPB is taking to the doorstep of Caroline Spelman MP in the run up to the Government’s autumn Comprehensive Spending Review.

 Campaigners will be out on Monday 23 and Tuesday 24 August around the constituency of Secretary of State for the Environment, Caroline Spelman.

 Signs carrying the RSPB’s message will appear on banners in and around the town and on billboards erected in fields and at busy road junctions.  They will even be pulled through the streets behind bicycles.

 As Secretary of State for the Environment, Caroline Spelman will decide which areas of Defra’s work will be sacrificed to meet the savings demanded of her.

 Dr Mark Avery, the RSPB’s Director of Conservation, said: “The government has a huge responsibility. They have to make meaningful cuts without harming vital services. We have been arguing very strongly that the natural environment is not the place to make swingeing cuts.”

 In Caroline Spelman’s constituency cuts could hamper efforts to understand and tackle the problems affecting the River Blythe.

The river is a Site of Special Scientific Interest for its plant and insect life but is classed as being in unfavourable condition due to invasive freshwater species such as the non-native Signal Crayfish and pollution from agricultural and urban run-off, which has lowered the water quality.  

 The Environment Agency is charged with improving the Blythe and the 70 per cent of English water bodies that currently fail to meet European standards.

 However, with cuts to the Agency’s budget all but inevitable, the picture does not look bright for our struggling river life.

 Other events have been organised in the constituencies of The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne and Cabinet Office minister, Oliver Letwin.

 Dr Avery added: “Defra’s budget amounts to just half a penny out of every pound the Government spends, yet that modest investment brings huge returns in the form of wildlife, clean air and water, flood alleviation, carbon sequestration and pollination.

 “Such things are beyond price and their loss would be too high a price to pay to balance the books.”