07/05/2025
URGENT: Take action today!
Below is text from a newsletter sent to supporters signed up to the email newsletter today, co-signed with Cheshire Wildlife Trust. It's a long post but we urgently need your help to defend nature and wildlife!
Dear friends and supporters,
Were you distressed by the Sycamore Gap tree being mindlessly cut down? Well, that's nothing compared to the destruction that a new law could unleash. We need your help right now to make our government think again.
This is an urgent newsletter about legislation going through Parliament right now. It's called The Planning and Infrastructure Bill. If our MPs vote this bill into law without making some very important changes, it could allow developers to destroy wildlife and habitats on a terrible scale.
As it stands, the bill would allow a developer to destroy the most protected and irreplaceable habitats in the country in return for making a payment into a “nature restoration fund”. In return for this payment, even the strongest nature protection laws that we have would no longer apply. This could include developments that would harm places like Danes Moss and the peatlands that surround it. The idea behind the nature restoration fund is that these payments would contribute to nature restoration in other places.
To put this simply, there is no sum of money, no amount of compensation, no social benefit that would justify destroying irreplaceable habitats like Danes Moss. There's just no excuse.
But this is about more than Danes Moss. All our peatlands would be at risk and all our ancient woodlands. In fact, this bill represents a critical threat not just to the security of our peatlands but to all nature and wildlife.
We all need nature. It sustains us quietly, constantly and totally throughout our lives. But currently, one in six species in the UK is at risk of extinction. This is an emergency and we must act to stop the decline of nature that this bill (if unamended) would accelerate. When development happens, nature must be protected as a priority, not left defenceless. That means we need to change this bill before it becomes law.
Here's how you can help right now:
Step one
Sign the Wildlife Trusts open letter to the Secretary of State, Angela Rayner MP. The link is here: https://action.wildlifetrusts.org/page/169472/petition/1
Step two
Write to your MP and express your concern. Ask them to support the amendments proposed by the Wildlife Trusts which are linked herehttps://www.wildlifetrusts.org/sites/default/files/2025-04/Planning%20%20Infrastructure%20Bill%20committee%20stage%20briefing%20-%20NRF%20-%2009.04.25.pdf
and the amendments proposed by the Better Planning Coalition which are linked here
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5901/cmpublic/PlanningInfrastructure/memo/PIB01.htm?__cf_chl_f_tk=nhYOWBlMOSvhRfu1KPbCg9uXwX4R3mHmcxfLFI_DGHU-1746200783-1.0.1.1-UBUKLEhNcaDAAuY3L_D8brB8Vzz81bWF9Zk__EEcfvA
Step three
Share your actions: on social media; share this newsletter; encourage all your friends and family to do the same. If you are not already, sign up to the Save Danes Moss newsletter, here:
https://savedanesmoss.com/
Thank you for your continued support for nature.
Signed jointly by
Danes Moss Trust and Cheshire Wildlife Trust
Amendments are needed to make sure there is space for nature in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Tell us why nature and development needs to go hand in hand.
