According to a new report the RSPB oversaw the spending of a £3 million publicly funded tree planting project at the their Haweswater reserve in Cumbria. The problem was however that many of those trees failed to grow “due to being planted incorrectly”.
The report also identified “microplastics from the tree guards breaking down and polluting the watercourses”, which supply drinking water to 2.5 million people in Northwest England.
Furthermore, the report found that the RSPB ignored warnings from local communities that the scheme would fail before the money was wasted and that relations between the local communities the RSPB are now at a near complete breakdown.
Furthermore the reports author, A.B. O’Rourke, suggested that “the RSPB had been pushing farmers into schemes that demand rapid radical changes without doing any small-scale trials beforehand. Nobody seems to be held responsible when the schemes fail and millions of pounds worth of public money is wasted.”
The report builds on the work of the ‘Better Outcomes on Upland Commons’ project, which was instigated in 2014 by King Charles when he was Prince of Wales to improve the management and conservation of English uplands. In this report, the King wrote, “I become increasingly distressed when I see opportunities to improve the condition of the upland habitats, their communities, businesses and stunning landscapes frustrated due to disagreements.”
This latest study at Haweswater indicates the situation has deteriorated even further since and the RSPB, under the direction of Lee Schofield, had overseen a project that wasted millions of public money and polluted the water of Northwest England.