Black Wood Solidarity Camp handed eviction papers

25.03.2010
This morn­ing a sher­iff offi­cer from Dun­fermline Sher­iff Court hand­ed the new­ly-estab­lished Black Wood Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp its evic­tion sum­mons, with notice to appear in court on Mon­day morn­ing. Despite not mak­ing an appear­ance yet at the site, it is believed that UK Coal rep­re­sen­ta­tives met with Fife police on Mon­day to dis­cuss how to deal with the occu­pa­tion.

25.03.2010
This morn­ing a sher­iff offi­cer from Dun­fermline Sher­iff Court hand­ed the new­ly-estab­lished Black Wood Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp its evic­tion sum­mons, with notice to appear in court on Mon­day morn­ing. Despite not mak­ing an appear­ance yet at the site, it is believed that UK Coal rep­re­sen­ta­tives met with Fife police on Mon­day to dis­cuss how to deal with the occu­pa­tion.

UK Coal has been very quick to begin court pro­ceed­ings against the camp and once again, as was the case with the Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, the occu­piers have been giv­en very lit­tle time to respond.

As well as rush­ing court pro­ceed­ings, it is also thought that UK Coal rushed in its con­trac­tors deal­ing with the re-loca­tion of Great Crest­ed Newts, a Euro­pean Pro­tect­ed Specie, the day after the site was occu­pied. As part of the con­di­tions for plan­ning con­sent the newt pop­u­la­tion on site was sup­posed to have been moved before work began. How­ev­er, on Mon­day after­noon a con­voy of con­trac­tors arrived and appeared to start this work.

In addi­tion, an ecol­o­gist has been sur­vey­ing the site this week and told the camp that the work to move the newts was behind sched­ule. Once again, as was the case in Main­shill, eco­log­i­cal sur­veys and work relat­ing to sur­vey­ing the pres­ence of nest­ing birds, bats and oth­er species, is being car­ried out after felling and the destruc­tion of the sites ecosys­tems has begun. All of this high­lights the fact that coun­cils and min­ing com­pa­nies are mere­ly pay­ing lip-ser­vice to ful­fill­ing the legal require­ments in deal­ing with pro­tect­ed species and frag­ile ecol­o­gy, and how employ­ees of envi­ron­men­tal con­sul­tants such as RPS are noth­ing more than eco­log­i­cal box-tick­ers for the min­ing com­pa­nies.

Sup­port­ers and local res­i­dents have con­tin­ued to vis­it the camp and defences are being strength­ened in antic­i­pa­tion of the inevitable grant­i­ng of the evic­tion order on Mon­day. Come to the Black Wood Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp and stop UK Coal trash­ing this site, the cli­mate and com­mu­ni­ty health!

Black Wood Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp
coalactionscotland@riseup.net
http://blackwood.noflag.org.uk/