The Warren Farm Nature Reserve in West London is facing ‘de-wilding’ after ‘re-wilding.
Ealing Council has said there is an “urgent need for cricket pitches” and has claimed to be preserving the nature reserve, despite plans to build floodlit football and cricket pitches.
Ealing Council has said there is an “urgent need for cricket pitches” and has claimed to be preserving the nature reserve, despite plans to build floodlit football and cricket pitches.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Hi guys, I'm Jack with London World.
00:01 Thanks for watching.
00:02 I'm in West London at the Warren Farm Nature Reserve,
00:06 where trustees and wildlife professionals
00:09 working at the reserve claim the local council
00:11 are looking to de-wild a site that is already rewilding.
00:15 The council recently set out plans
00:17 to build football and cricket pitches
00:20 on the Warren Farm Nature Reserve.
00:22 I caught up with the professionals and trustees
00:24 to find out exactly what was going on.
00:27 This is one of the most ecologically important sites
00:30 in London.
00:32 Developing anything on here would be a bad idea,
00:35 let alone taking half of it.
00:37 Because of the nature of it, it's a big, vast, open plain.
00:42 That's the reason why the skylarks nest here,
00:44 because it's got this big, open space.
00:46 If you take away half of it, you'll ruin all of it.
00:50 So it's very unlikely that the skylarks
00:52 would continue to nest here.
00:54 The half of the site that the council wants to develop
00:57 is actually the part with the most biodiversity on it.
01:01 So that would actually destroy a lot of what's here.
01:05 Warren Farm is 61 acres of rewilded meadow habitat.
01:09 And yes, it was used as sports back in the '60s.
01:12 But before that, as the name suggests, it was indeed a farm.
01:15 And what's happened since the site has had almost 15 years
01:18 now to rewild is seeds that were laying dormant in the seed
01:21 bank have had the chance to grow and show themselves.
01:23 There's some incredible, incredible effect.
01:26 So we know, for example, there are several plant species
01:28 growing here that are facing national extinction.
01:32 So we have an incredible amount of biodiversity here as well.
01:34 We've got the slow worms.
01:36 We've got shrews.
01:37 We've got yellow-necked mice.
01:38 We've got water voles, barn owls.
01:40 We have linets.
01:42 We have house sparrows.
01:44 We've got starlings, which all birds in our childhood
01:46 used to be really common, but now, sadly,
01:48 are on the UK Red List facing extinction, the hardest of which
01:52 for us is the skylarks.
01:53 So here in Warren Farm Nature Reserve,
01:55 we are the only site in Ealing that has skylarks nesting here.
01:58 These are super rare endangered birds.
02:00 The RSPB Central London and Richmond and Twickenham group
02:04 are supporting us in saying that a quarter of London skylark
02:07 population breeds here.
02:09 So if Ealing Council go ahead with their proposals
02:11 to develop the site, they are agreeing
02:14 to wipe out a quarter of this endangered bird's population.
02:17 Ealing Council has since defended plans
02:20 and underlined urgent need for cricket and football pitches
02:23 as the reason for development.
02:25 A spokesman for the council said that although not everyone
02:28 is going to agree, compromises are
02:30 needed if they are to both protect and preserve nature
02:33 and bring back the use of sport pitches
02:35 that young people in Southall urgently need.
02:38 However, no decision on the development is set in stone.
02:42 Meta-habitats like this, there's only 2% of them
02:45 left across the whole of the UK.
02:47 So to have one like Warren Farm Nature Reserve,
02:50 gifted to us at a time of a biological and ecological
02:53 emergency in a country where we're
02:55 one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world,
02:58 we rank 179th out of 218 countries assessed,
03:01 it's too vital and too important to just throw away.
03:04 And to claim to be rewilding when you're actually de-wilding
03:08 is really disingenuous.