Several newspapers this week, and the PM programme on Radio 4, have covered a story about the RSPB in Cheshire as it appears to seek to sell land for housing that it was given in a legacy on the proviso that it should never be built on. Here are the Telegraph and Mail takes on the story. Neil Robertson, the RSPB’s director for Northern England, is reported as saying:
"[Mrs Rhead] wanted the land she left to us to be used for the benefit of wildlife and requested that it should not be built upon. Unfortunately we have not been able to meet both of these wishes as her land is not really beneficial to wildlife and there is little potential to improve it for nature. After looking at all of the options, we have decided that the best way forward is to investigate the possibility of selling the land."
Not everyone agrees that the land is wildlife-poor, or with the decision to sell.
My point in raising this here is not to bash the RSPB (the queue to do that is far too long), but to say what a wonderful environmental education exploration this would make for students – especially, but not just, in Cheshire. It's a very contemporary issue with, on the face of it, nature in conflict with people, a charity in bed with developers, and a dying woman's wishes ignored. But everyone will have a point here. What You Forgot the Birds, a pressure group, and Bird Forum, an on-line 'birding community', have to say may be two of several useful starting points for an exploration of the issues, and here is Patrick Barkham in the Guardian. Of course the RSPB itself will have its own side of the story, although, oddly, I could find no reference to the story on its website.
Anyway! It's all very ESD 2.
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