{"id":51589,"date":"2024-04-09T09:30:42","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T08:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacothenorth.net\/blog\/?p=51589"},"modified":"2024-04-16T18:50:30","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T17:50:30","slug":"wildlife-trusts-not-to-be-trusted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jacothenorth.net\/blog\/wildlife-trusts-not-to-be-trusted\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildlife Trusts – Not To Be Trusted"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In a sense, this is a follow-up to a piece I put out in February called ‘Wildlife Trusts, Crazy Money, Hidden Agendas<\/a>‘. Perhaps a variation on a theme.<\/p>\n

Though this is not quite the piece I originally promised. Perhaps I’ll return to the sweat lodges and other joys in the ‘Bhutan of Wales’<\/a> (“ample parking space<\/em>“) at some later date.<\/p>\n

\u25ca<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

ABOUT MUCH MORE THAN NEWTS<\/p>\n

What you have to understand about modern environmentalism, certainly in Wales, is that it’s no longer fleece-jacketed innocents protecting red squirrels or tagging birds. It is now intensely political. And financially lucrative.<\/p>\n

Lucrative, as long as it promotes a certain interpretation of the world.<\/p>\n

Which means, in practice, that environmentalists work for BlackRock and other Globalist corporations; Bill ‘jabs and bugs’ Gates, Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum.<\/p>\n

And even if environmentalists don’t<\/em> realise it, if they’re just useful idiots, then that don’t matter none – what matters is that they do what they do.<\/p>\n

And as I suggested, they’re getting paid handsomely for it. Here’s one example.<\/p>\n

Total income for the North Wales Wildlife Trust <\/a>went up from \u00a31.83m in 2019 to \u00a36.17 in 2023, a rise of 237%. But in the same period, funding from the ‘Welsh Government’ rose from \u00a3309,480 to \u00a33,760,000, an increase of 1,115%.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Click to open enlarged in separte tab<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Similar increases in the funding awarded to the other wildlife trusts, river groups, etc<\/em>, correlates with the ramping up of the ‘Welsh Government’s war on farmers.<\/p>\n

Which meant blaming just about anybody other than D\u0175r Cymru<\/em> for river pollution.<\/p>\n

But environmentalists weren’t confining themselves to persecuting cows, and matters scatological; for they were also pushing the anti-car agenda.<\/p>\n

\u25ca<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

THE WAR ON CARS I<\/p>\n

An example of this would be defeating plans to upgrade the M4 around Newport<\/a>. Here’s Friends of the Earth reminding us of its role in that campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Which is fine with me because that’s the raison d’\u00eatre<\/em> of environmental groups. But if opposing M4 improvements was ‘Welsh Government’ policy, and if ‘WG’ funded various groups to support that policy, then that puts a different complexion on things.<\/p>\n

As FoE stated, one of the major reasons for rejecting improvements to the M4 was to protect the Gwent Levels. Which was also the reasoning given by the first minister<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mark Drakeford said he would not have gone ahead even if it was affordable because of the impact on the Gwent Levels.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But the environmentalists’ war on roads didn’t end with saving the Gwent Levels. (Though not from solar farms<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

I’ve written a number of times about the ‘Welsh Government’s decision to abandon all new road schemes. Let’s begin in June 2021, with the announcement of a ‘freeze’ on new road building<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then, in September 2021, came news of a panel<\/a> . . .<\/p>\n

. . . of climate change and transport specialists . . . led by Dr Lynn Sloman MBE, a transport consultant based in Wales<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Despite what the ‘Welsh Government’ wanted us to believe, Dr Lynn Sloman is not ‘based in Wales’; she actually lives in London, where she sits on the Transport for London board<\/a>, headed by mayor Sadiq Ulez Khan.<\/p>\n

Dr Lynn Sloman is, predictably, an anti-car fanatic<\/a>. And her connection to Wales is a holiday home in Cwm Einion, near Machynlleth. To which she presumably drives.<\/p>\n

Dr Sloman’s panel delivered the result required in February 2023<\/a> – no new roads!<\/p>\n

This impacted on just about every part of the country, and deprived communities of long-awaited and much-needed, improvements. It meant no third crossing of the Menai, no by-pass for Llanbedr, no by-pass for Llandeilo.<\/p>\n

This was of course welcomed by both Rachel Sharp, CEO of\u00a0 the officially defunct Wildlife Trusts Wales; and her trusty henchman, Tim Birch, of Extinction Rebellion.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Click to open enlarged in separate tab<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But there is one issue on which environmentalists could and should be more vocal.<\/p>\n

We’ll ignore the energy consumed in manufacturing wind turbines, then the damage inflicted on the environment from shipping them to Wales; widening roads, felling trees, ripping out hedgerows to get them to where they’re being erected.<\/p>\n

Instead’ let’s just focus on the damage they cause in situ<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Wind turbines destroy peat deposits. They scar hillsides with access roads and cable trenches. Hundreds of pylons are needed to carry whatever’s generated in Wales to England. The turbine blades kill birds, bats, and all manner of insects.<\/p>\n

There are also threats to human health from infrasound, flicker, and worrying over your home losing value due to its proximity to wind turbines.<\/p>\n

Yet environmentalists have little to say against wind turbines. That’s because their ‘outrage’ can be switched off and on, as required, by their paymasters.<\/p>\n

\u25ca<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

THE ‘FOXES’ OF ENVIRONMENTALISM<\/p>\n

We often hear: “Farming occupies around 90% of ‘our’ land<\/em>“, as if it’s something undesirable. It’s very revealing, because those who say it seem genuinely horrified that so much of Wales belongs to hairy-arsed peasants.<\/span><\/p>\n

A recent example of the ‘90%’ fixation came in an article in ‘Welsh Government’ mouthpiece Nation.Cymru by Dr Malcolm Smith<\/a>. He was ostensibly writing about the ‘Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme<\/a> (SFS).<\/p>\n

Smith wants us to believe that carbon emissions increase global temperatures when there is no link whatsoever, and then rather gives away his own position on SFS with:<\/p>\n

Trees, it seems, aren\u2019t welcomed by most farmers.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This obsession with the amount of land held by farmers seems most prevalent among politicians and middle class enviro-grifters who want Welsh farmers off the land they and their corporate patrons covet.<\/p>\n

I say that because no one has ever come up to me in a pub, a supermarket, or any other setting, grabbed me by the lapels and shouted – ‘Isn’t it bloody awful that farmers have so much land?<\/em>‘<\/p>\n

Nobody. Honestly!<\/p>\n

Which makes the support these spivs get from Welsh socialists difficult to fathom. And the support from those socialists who claim they want independence inexplicable.<\/p>\n

Maybe this subservience can be explained by something I read last week. Someone was trying to explain why Sinn F\u00e9in has fallen for the Globalist-Woke-Left agenda.<\/p>\n

It is a lingering symptom of what Ruairi \u00d3 Bradaigh<\/a> once described as the intellectual inferiority complex of men who were absurdly impressed by . . . bourgeois lefties and liberals<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think that explains a lot of what we see in Wales. Particularly the insecure among us, who can’t resist a bit of flannel delivered in a ‘posh’ accent.<\/p>\n

What Ruairi \u00d3 Bradaigh called “the intellectual inferiority complex<\/em>” always lurks in the Welsh psyche. And it seems to afflict socialists far more than it affects those of us on the political right.<\/p>\n

Welsh leftists like to see themselves as ‘progressive’, which then leaves them wide open to the blandishments of the ‘foxes’ Malcom X refers to here.<\/p>\n