GWPF calls on Sir David Attenborough to save Red-listed Kittiwakes from giant wind turbine project

The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) has written to Sir David Attenborough, asking him to intervene personally to reverse the government's green light for the giant Hornsea 3 offshore wind turbines which pose an existential threat to Kittiwake bird populations facing global extinction.

On the 31st of December last year Alok Sharma, then Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, gave planning consent for the giant Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm. He decided to over-ride planning inspectors who had advised refusal on the grounds of unacceptable environmental impacts on the Red-listed Kittiwake populations of the East Coast, whose resting and nesting sites are protected by Natura 2000 legislation, some of the strongest environmental protection in Europe.

In giving consent Mr Sharma said that that contribution of the Hornsea 3 scheme to reaching Net Zero was more important than the affect on the local environment and its bird populations, and justified ignoring Natura 2000 protection.

This sets a precedent that the renewables industry has already identified as “opening the floodgates” for any major industrial development that can make a claim, however tenuous, to low carbon credentials.

The GWPF has written to Sir David Attenborough, asking him to intervene personally to reverse this decision and request a moratorium of the mega-project before it is too late.

For further details see John Constable: Kittiwake extinction risk and the death of Environmentalism