Category: North West England

15.04.2010
Update:

As you know, we locked on around 10:30. Some of the work­ers ini­tial­ly react­ed aggres­sive­ly, try­ing to move the dig­ger while peo­ple were on it, using abu­sive lan­guage and assault­ing one of our group — though we were empha­sis­ing that we were peace­ful and that they were break­ing the law by act­ing dan­ger­ous­ly towards us. After about 20 mins of sev­er­al mem­bers of our group talk­ing calm­ly to them, they stood down and wait­ed for the police to arrive. The police turned up short­ly after, try­ing to talk us down, but we stayed locked on until the Tac­ti­cal Aid Unit arrived with Bolt cut­ters to extract us.
Inter­est­ing­ly, it seemed they want­ed every­one else out of the way, so they could ‘deal’ with us and get the job done as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. We’ve found out that lots of local peo­ple tried to join us, but were being stopped by the police well out of vis­i­ble dis­tance. The police tac­ti­cal aid unit also showed lit­tle regard for our safe­ty — their inten­tion was to sim­ply remove me from the dig­ger by any means nec­es­sary — which was effec­tive­ly to try to throw me off it.

An ambu­lance also turned up pre­emp­tive­ly, which sug­gests they were antic­i­pat­ing that our extrac­tion would neces­si­tate the use of force, and unnec­es­sary harm to our per­sons.

I think we man­aged to stay there for a good while to halt the destruc­tion of the bog and to get the mes­sage out.

After the police released us, we met up with some of the local cam­paign­ers (Save Our North­west Green­belt), who’d had a meet­ing in the evening, which was real­ly empow­er­ing.

At first I was arrest­ed for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass, but then de-arrest­ed and re-arrest­ed after being cut free under new charges.

We’ve been charged, odd­ly, under sec­tion 4A of the Pub­lic order act, which cov­ers using words/behaviour to cause harassment/distress, even though our protest was com­plete­ly non-vio­lent and good humoured.

Our court date is May 10th, 9:30am at Sal­ford Mag­is­trate’s court — a sol­i­dar­i­ty demon­stra­tion is being planned for this date, and any sup­port would be grate­ful­ly wel­comed!

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Activists shut down extrac­tion on a Peat Bog extrac­tion site by lock­ing onto a lor­ry and a dig­ger. Work was still halt­ed at the time of writ­ing.

Earth First activists shut down Peat Bog extrac­tion at Chat Moss in Greater Man­ches­ter. They entered the site at 10.30 am, locked onto a lor­ry and dig­ger which was being used to remove peat from the site. As of 2pm two activists were still locked onto the vehi­cles, with around 5 cops in atten­dance.

Peat bogs have recent­ly become the focus of inter­na­tion­al atten­tion because they act as huge ‘car­bon sponges’: as peat is formed it locks away car­bon that has been absorbed by plants as they grow, there­by help­ing to reduce the car­bon in the atmos­phere and slow glob­al warm­ing. The drain­ing and extrac­tion of this unique habi­tat caus­es the release of thou­sands of years worth of stored car­bon. Glob­al­ly, peat bogs cov­er just 3% of the world’s sur­face but store twice as much car­bon as all the world’s forests com­bined.

The great­est threat to peat bogs is from peat extrac­tion for use in hor­ti­cul­ture. An area the size of 250 Trafal­gar Squares is dug up every year for the UK hor­ti­cul­tur­al indus­try, with 70% of this demand com­ing from ama­teur gar­den­ers. This is despite the fact that there are a wide vari­ety of good qual­i­ty peat-free com­mer­cial com­posts, mean­ing that there is no need for the UK to con­sume any peat at all. The Roy­al Botan­ic Gar­dens at Kew, for instance, has been peat free since 1992.

Local cam­paign­er Mary Chapel, said:

“We are stop­ping the destruc­tion of Chat Moss bog and to pro­tect this site for the ben­e­fit of present and future gen­er­a­tions. They har­bour a wide vari­ety of birds, plants and ani­mals that can be found nowhere else. Instead of pro­tect­ing this valu­able habi­tat Sinclair’s / Joseph Met­calfe are van­dal­is­ing it in order to make a prof­it when there are count­less alter­na­tives to peat for use in com­post, as well as more sus­tain­able jobs in those indus­tries.”

Anoth­er cam­paign­er Justin Hocks con­tin­ued:

“Peat bogs like Chat Moss store vast amounts of car­bon and are poten­tial­ly one of our best assets in fight­ing cli­mate change. The Coun­cil tell us they are seri­ous about cli­mate change and the envi­ron­ment yet allow valu­able sites like Chat Moss to be bull­dozed. They say they will pro­tect the Green Belt but it’s all just hot air. We have come here today in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the local Save Our Green­belt cam­paign, and to pro­tect this valu­able habi­tat and to say enough is enough – leave our bog alone!”

Notes for Edi­tors
[1] Earth First! is a Direct Action protest move­ment first formed in the UK in the ear­ly 1990s against the road build­ing pro­gramme and pro­tect­ing wilder­ness. Lat­er Earth First! groups took Direct Action against the intro­duc­tion of GM crops into Britain, and helped mount the cam­paign to save Thorne and Hat­field Moors, Yorkshire’s most impor­tant peat-bogs.

Over 94% of the UK’s low­land peat bogs have been dam­aged or destroyed, most­ly in the last 50 years, and Nat­ur­al Eng­land esti­mate that 3 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 is emit­ted every year in the UK from our dam­aged peat bogs – the equiv­a­lent to the aver­age emis­sions of 350,000 house­holds.

Pro­tect­ing exist­ing peat bogs and restor­ing dam­aged or degrad­ed ones could lock car­bon in the soil and help to active­ly reduce the UK car­bon foot­print, as well as help­ing to pro­tect many rare species of plants and ani­mals, improve bio­di­ver­si­ty and pro­tect a wild and rare habi­tat.
For copies of Nat­ur­al England’s report: England’s Peat­lands – Car­bon Stor­age & Green­house Gas­es by Nat­ur­al Eng­land. http://naturalengland.etraderstores.com/NaturalEnglandShop/product.aspx?ProductID=335ef60d-241e-4495–9625-094fc3cf9689

Link to high­er qual­i­ty pho­tos — http://www.mediafire.com/?zloylojzlgq