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Fast train to loss of trust
A ROW between The Wildlife Trusts (WT) and HS2 broke out last week, after the charity claimed that the infrastructure project ‘undervalued Nature and overvalued its compensation measures’. WT claims that there are ‘fundamental flaws’ in the way HS2 Ltd has assessed the value of Nature along the path of the railway project.
In response to the claim, HS2 Ltd wrote on Twitter that the claims by WT are ‘incorrect and based on unreliable data from limited desk research’. The firm said that HS2’s data is ‘independently verified, accurate and reliable’ and accused the charity of ‘seeking PR opportunities’ by refusing to work with the firm.
The row is the latest in a long-running fight between those who say HS2 is necessary for the UK’s future transport infrastructure and those who claim that the environmental and financial cost of construction is too high.
‘HS2 Ltd must correct its mapping and errors in its figures and make all its new data publicly available,’ said Craig Bennett, CEO of WT. ‘This vast infrastructure project is taking a wrecking ball to wildlife and communities are in despair at losing the wild places—the woods, meadows and wetlands that they love—they will never get back. HS2 Ltd must repair Nature in a way that’s commensurate with the magnitude of the damage being caused.’
Biodiversity loss will be 7.9 times higher than HS2 Ltd calculates
In its report, titled, WT says that across Phase 1 of construction, which
