Our next online meeting is our AGM at 8pm on Tuesday 5th October. We’re hoping for a face-to-face meeting – venue still to be confirmed.
The Gardens of Easton Lodge have an Apple and Bees day on Sunday 19th September. You can also meet with the East of England Apples and Orchards. Monica Askay will be there for signing/sale copies of her book ‘Orchard Recipes from Eastern England’.
The Sustainable Hertfordshire Strategy will define the county council action plan to address the climate and biodiversity crises. It’s a good start but we need to get to net-zero earlier and a lot more land for biodiversity. Here’s our feedback on the plan. You can add your comments here.
Komoot, Open Street Map, and local rights of way maps are great resources to find local walking and cycling routes. See our guide to vehicle-free route-finding.
If you’re aged 11-18 and want to save the world you could join the next generation of activists at the Youth, Ocean and Climate Summit, on June 8th 2021 for World Oceans Day. This one-day virtual Summit will give you a platform to combine your passions, experiences and ideas on the most pressing issues of our time.
Reduce waste and save resources. See our local recycling guide
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The damage to the habitat of the wildlife in the area will be damaged beyond repair. This area is the home to wildlife such as water voles, bats, rabbits, barn owls, wood peckers, weasels, badgers, cuckoos, kingfishers, deer, raptors, foxes, newts, frogs, bees... the list is endless. The historical ...
This use of land is totally inappropriate and should never have been provided for by EHDC. It will undermine any hopes we have to improve use of our road network to make our town better for residents, through making space for walking and cycling into and within the town. Please sign the petition. ...
After some discussion we decided the solar farm application was on balance positive. Please add your voices on the planning portal (currently mostly objections). This was the text of our response: The Bishop’s Stortford Climate Group have met with the landowner, walked the site with him and discussed visual and biodiversity impacts. We support this application on condition that the assurances given by the landowner are met in terms of:• The scheme promises to bring improved access to walkers with the creation of over 2km of new permissive paths. The paths will be edged with new mixed hedgerows and will be broad in order to accommodate the solar farm maintenance vehicles.• A new wildlife corridor connecting Bloodhounds Wood to Bailey Hills would be created.• There would be over 12 acres of new wildflower meadows that would run north to south along the line of the electricity pylons.• A network of small ponds across the site – these would take time to establish but the solar farm is seen as a long-term project.• There will be wide buffers created to protect existing woodland.• The land under the solar panel arrays would be managed for wildlife.• There are no plans for using any of the site for housing.Our general view is that we need a lot of renewable electricity capacity and it has to go somewhere. The alternative would be a lot more nuclear power and that has proven to be expensive and far too slow to build – alongside problems of radioactive waste production. The cost of wind and solar on the other hand continue to fall dramatically with offshore wind now cheaper than existing gas fired generation.We are lucky to have a large windy coastline which means we could do a huge amount with offshore wind. But we need solar to create a more balanced profile of generation. The 2 technologies complement each other well. It’s often windier in the winter and sunnier in the summer. Without solar alongside wind power we would need a lot more expensive storage. You could argue that we should put the solar on our roofs instead of on farmland. The reality is that we will need to do both. We will not only need to provide enough renewable capacity to replace our existing fossil fuel generation but to supply a very large increase in demand for electricity as we electrify practically every part of our economy, not just heat and transport but, directly or indirectly, food production and industrial processes like steel production.Solar needs to go somewhere so while this will inevitably have visual impacts we feel this application should be supported on the conditions above. publicaccess.eastherts.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?keyVal=QOZ7NEGL00X00&acti......
