Gardiner says Hare Island demonstrates need for an independent Environmental Protection Agency
Ulster Unionist Environment Spokesman, Sam Gardiner MLA, today claimed that the incident on Hare Island in Strangford Lough when there was a mass felling of conifers, damaging the habitat of species like long eared owls, showed that there was a desperate need for an independent Environmental Agency.
“When the Environment and Heritage Service eventually explained itself and told us that the plan was to plant native deciduous trees to replace the conifers many of which were wind damaged anyway, the tree felling - which at first seemed horrendous - began to make some sense. The problem was that there was a total lack of communication and people did not know what was going on.”
“This lack of communication is what I find most disturbing about our civil servants. It comes from over thirty years of unaccountable direct rule. Basically the civil servants don’t seem to understand that it is the public that pays their wages and that the public has the right to know what is going on. There is a huge cultural problem with the civil service.”
“A new independent Environmental Protection Agency is needed so that we can have a culture change in a new independent non-governmental organization. People care deeply about the environment and they don’t want this top-down, keep them in the dark approach.”
“I am deeply concerned that the DUP, which is the largest unionist party, is equivocal about an independent Environmental Protection Agency. I fear that the new Environment Minister will not want to see a whole lot of the functions of her new Department hived off into an independent agency. The DUP need to remember that it is distinctly un-British not to have an independent Environmental Protection Agency. Everywhere else in the UK has one.”