Eviction notice for Staffordshire HS2 protesters in woodland

About 40 people currently live at a woodland site off the A51

Protesters who set up camp to try to stop HS2 building on woodland have been served an eviction notice.

About 40 people live at the site, near Swynnerton, Staffordshire, after the Bluebell Woods Protection Camp group moved there almost a year ago.

Several structures were built in trees and campaigners stated they had used "things [that] would naturally go to waste".

HS2 Ltd said this spring it would start "creating a new wildlife habitat".

The protection camp group has been taking the action, just off the A51, over phase 2a of the high-speed line from Fradley to Crewe

Jim, from the group, said: "We've got 10 years to stop, like, ecological collapse.

"It's not just us saying this, this is all the scientists, that we can't be felling ancient woodlands. They might be tree planting, but you can't replace a 400-year-old oak, you just can't."

The protection camp group has been taking action over phase 2a of the line from Fradley to Crewe

Railway engineer and writer Gareth Dennis said as an engineer and an environmentalist any loss of woodland was upsetting, but the "extent, the lengths to which the design has avoided habitats, valuable habitats where it can is substantial".

Mr Dennis, who lectures at Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education, added: "I was recently visiting a tunnel that's been built to specifically avoid damaging ancient woodland.

"If you look on a map, the alignment curves, ducks and dives to avoid these sensitive habitats as best they can."

HS2 Ltd, the organisation delivering the railway, stated "since the newest section was approved by MPs a year ago" it had conducted more than 1,200 ground tests to develop a detailed picture of the area's geology "which helps us to design and build the line".

It added this spring it would begin creating "new wildlife habitat along the route" between the West Midlands and Crewe, including planting 600,000 sq m of woodland.