Shropshire Star

LETTER: Millions of trees lost to wind farms

A reader questions wind farms and their impact on the environment.

Published
Wind farm amongst electricity pylons.

Eleanor Clegg, Friends of the Earth (FoE), continues to mistakenly sing the praises of, and glorify wind-driven generators.

According to her stunted reasoning, these limited and ineffective wind-driven machines will be instrumental and vital in saving life on the planet. Really!

Perhaps she will be good enough to explain to readers how on earth this will be achieved when nearly two million trees (yes, that is correct) have been felled in Wales to accommodate her beloved wind farms – not to overlook the tons and tons of concrete used in creating generator bases and the necessary infrastructure to connect to the Grid.

Huge areas of peat and gorse land have disappeared – land which would normally soak up rainfall, thus minimising run-off and the threat of flooding.

National Resources Wales (NRW) state the number of trees that have been felled for all onshore wind farm development in Wales are as follows, Clocaenog Wind Farm, 307,200 Cefn Croes Wind Farm, 568,000 Pen y Cymoedd and Maerdy Wind Farm,732,320 Brechfa Wind Farm, 330,880; the total number of trees felled for onshore wind farm developments on NRW managed land so far totals 1,938,400.

Thus under windless conditions we will have no electricity and no trees – brilliant! Maybe our perceptive and worldly-wise Eleanor has plans to plant a few million very fast growing (new to science) trees to compensate for such a shameful loss – or is ‘Eleanor the Wind’ planning to escape the repercussions of deforestation and live on Mars?

Dave Haskell, Cardigan

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