Press release: Damage to butterfly habitat

[Neil Jones]

Welsh Development Agency Damages protected butterfly site.

The South Wales branch of the charity Butterfly Conservation
has condemned the Welsh Development Agency's destruction of
the habitat of a protected butterfly species. The habitat of
the Marsh Fritillary, a rare species which is listed under
schedule 5 of the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act, has been
ploughed up at a development site at Felindre near Swansea.

Mr Neil  Jones, Butterfly Conservation's South Wales organiser
said, "I am utterly appalled at this. A  government body 
should never act in  this way. This is a protected species.
You can see fragments of the habitat which the bulldozers have
missed with the plants the caterpillars eat still showing."

The site at Felindre has been proposed for the development
of a large factory but as yet the WDA have not found an 
investor. "We have been promised measures to safeguard
this butterfly on the site but it seems as 
if the Agency just doesn't care. This is the butterfly 
equivalent of destroying Red Kites' nesting sites."
-- 
Neil Jones- Neil at nwjones.demon.co.uk http://www.nwjones.demon.co.uk/
"At some point I had to stand up and be counted. Who speaks for the
butterflies?" Andrew Lees - The quotation on his memorial at Crymlyn Bog
National Nature Reserve