Save Yew Tree Farm. Protect Nature in Bristol
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Catherine Withers - the incredible farmer at the heart of Yew Tree Farm - needs your support to prevent devastating ecocide and the destruction of one of Bristol's most important natural spaces. And she needs it urgently.
Yew Tree Farm's important and unique habitat is being willfully destroyed. Birds nests are being vandalised, and endangered Dormice are being put at risk. Every day, Catherine and a passionate group of people are physically placing themselves between the Farm's rare habitats and the developers who want to bulldoze it for burial space and housing.
It is a scandal affecting the whole city of Bristol... Yew Tree Farm's SNCI status should protect it from harmful development, but so far it has been meaningless. If the SNCI can be ignored, there is nothing to stop other sites of ecological value from also being developed and destroyed across the city.
And the worst part...? Bristol 'ecological emergency' City Council have the power to stop it, but seem to be choosing not to!
It had looked like the local elections would be a turning point for the farm's future, with the Green Party pledging to protect it. Local politicians from other parties also jumped on the bandwagon, boosting their environmental creds by saying they would protect the rare and endangered species that live on the farm. But 3 months later, the new Green-led council have been unable to do anything significant. Habitats continue to be destroyed, there has been little progress in overturning the decision to expand South Bristol Crematorium, and the Council have evicted Catherine from the contested piece of land.
Her trust in the system is fading, and Council officers are actively working on plans to tear up the grasslands that are protected by the SNCI. This has left Catherine with no option but to launch legal action to make sure that Bristol City Council face up to their responsibilities, put their money where their mouth is, and actually protect our local environment rather than just talking about it.
If you love nature and share our opinion that it needs to be protected, please join the fight by investing in the legal battle to save Yew Tree Farm.
If Catherine can raise the money needed to bring a Judicial Review, there is a very strong chance that any decent judge will put a stop to all of the scandalous decisions and actions which have already seen birds nests being hacked to pieces during scrub clearance, and dormouse habitats being torn apart by huge hedge-cutting machines. But to get to a point where a judge says that enough is enough, Catherine will need to spend thousands on legal fees. The first stage of the legal battle will cost approximately £10,000. We don't think that Catherine should carry the entire financial burden of protecting Bristol's wildest and most important natural spaces, so we need every Bristolian who cares about nature to chip in and show that we won't quietly sit back and watch nature being destroyed. When it comes to protecting the natural world, we should not accept any compromises.
Please donate now. Tomorrow may be too late... if things continue at the current rate, soon there won't be any nature left to protect.
Fundraising team: Yew Tree Farm Defenders (2)
Laura Chapman
Organizer
CATHERINE WITHERS
Team member