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From: "Loombreaker" (loombreaker@nematode.freeserve.co.uk)
To: "Loombreaker distro list" (loombreaker@nematode.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 11:27:41 +0100
Subject: August Loombreaker - Issue 21

Party against Peat - 25th Aug 2001 (Hatfield Moor, Yorkshire)

There have been a number of Parties against Peat Extraction in recent months on Hatfield Moor in Yorkshire. There have been occupations of the peat works, mass trespasses on the moors, and the peat pixies had been busy tying to save their homelands, with drainage channels filled in. Rumours abound of feistier pixies getting to the machinery and workings of the site.

Peat moorland is a rapidly vanishing habitat, which supports a great diversity of species, from darting dragonflies to beautiful cotton grasses (& 5,000 other species). When asking for proposed sites for "Special Area of Conservation" status, the EU specifically told our government to include peatland - and yet we allow the biggest peatland in the country to be sealed off to the public, dug up, packed in bags and sold for better hanging baskets, purely for the profit of a US company, Scotts. People have been fighting this destruction for decades, from legal challenges to night-time sabotage. It may not be possible to restore the site as a peatland if Scotts manage to cut as much as they want this season (before September). At the current rate of cutting, there will be no peat left at all in three years.

To come to the next Mass Trespass on 25th August, or to visit other days -
contact - Manchester Earth First! on 226 6814

Ask your garden centre to stop selling peat compost. Unless it is labelled "peat-free", it will almost certainly contain part of Hatfield Moor ­ there are huge piles of bags labelled Irish Peat awaiting there, ready for distribution.

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