A wildlife trust has said it was “horrified” to hear about what it labelled the proposed destruction of a rare habitat in Worcestershire. <\/p>\n
It comes after Wyre Forest District Council agreed in principle the proposed sale of part of Burlish Country Park, also known as Burlish Meadows, to Kidderminster Harriers Football Club.<\/p>\n
A council spokesperson said the land being “considered forms part of the former golf course site” and Kidderminster Harriers said the land “did not include the Burlish Top Nature Reserve”.<\/p>\n
But Worcestershire Wildlife Trust has said it is urging councillors to “change their plans”, with a spokesperson for the group saying: “Burlish Meadows should not be for sale.”<\/p>\n
Kidderminster Harriers’ proposal was to develop 8.5 hectares (21 acres) of land at Burlish Meadows, a 40-hectare (99 acre) country park near Stourport-on-Severn, Worcestershire.<\/p>\n
Wyre Forest District Council said approximately 21% of the land was being considered. <\/p>\n
Mike Perry, chief executive officer of the trust, described Burlish Meadows as a “really important green lung for both people and wildlife”.<\/p>\n
“Heathland and acid grassland are incredibly rare – we’ve lost over 90% of Worcestershire’s heathland \u2013 so the destruction of a fifth of this land would be a huge loss for the wildlife that needs this kind of habitat but would also remove a large part of green space for people too.<\/p>\n
“When Burlish Meadows Conservation area was formed, it was to provide an area for wildlife as well as for an accessible place for local people to use. <\/p>\n
“This has helped to reduce visitor pressure on some of the more sensitive areas of this block of land.”<\/p>\n
He added: “Burlish Meadows should not be for sale at all. Kidderminster Harriers Football Club play an important role in the local community but this is the wrong place for such a development.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A wildlife trust has said it was “horrified” to hear about what it labelled the proposed destruction of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-684309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}