Hands Off Havannah

Thousands of luxury houses have been built on green fields and floodplains across Newcastle Great Park over the last 20 years, with local communities forced to battle for vital infrastructure such as shops, doctors and schools.

Development has been allowed where development should not have been allowed, for example directly adjacent to Havannah and Three Hills Local Nature Reserve (LNR), where hundreds of mature trees and established hedgerows have been ripped out and wildflower meadows lost from the Ouseburn Catchment wildlife corridor, all because of Persimmon Homes and Taylor Wimpey’s relentless pursuit of profit.

Not content with destroying habitat around the nature reserve, Newcastle Great Park Consortium is now looking to take land from INSIDE the nature reserve.

Planning application 2022/1131/01/DET would see trees and vegetation removed along the public right of way that runs directly through the LNR, from the Three Hills car park to the Great Park to make way for a new ‘strategic route’, as well as additional tree, hedgerow and scrub removal in the Ouseburn Catchment wildlife corridor.

This route would be lit with huge street lights, which would extend through the nature reserve and around the perimeter of the southern boundary of the reserve, lighting it up like a beacon.

Artificial light at night is harmful to wildlife and disrupts breeding and feeding patterns in amphibians, birds, mammals, insects and plants.

In 2018, Chris Packham visited Havannah as part of his ‘Nature Reserves Are Not Enough’ campaign, highlighting the need to protect land outside of nature reserves for wildlife.

What would this vociferous campaigner say if he knew there were now plans to develop INSIDE the nature reserve?

We are in the midst of a biodiversity crisis, with two million species at risk of extinction globally and 1 in 6 species at risk of extinction in the UK.

Locally we have felt these losses too, as wildlife habitats are being fenced off, eaten away and bulldozed.

Havannah has already been well and truly hemmed in.

Wildlife cannot exist in isolated pockets and fragmented landscapes. We cannot allow greedy developers to profit at nature's expense.

In July 2022, Newcastle City Council pledged to take local measures to prevent the loss of and to enhance biodiversity.

These plans, if approved, would undermine Newcastle City Council's commitments to the natural environment and its legal duty to actively conserve and enhance biodiversity.

Local wildlife would be dealt yet another devastating blow.

We must stand against this latest stab at inflicting widespread loss of biodiversity, at a time when we should be protecting it the most.

If enough people sign this petition, we can send a clear message that Newcastle's nature reserves are not for the taking.