Thank you to Patrick Barkham for highlighting the destructive insanity of the Arundel bypass scheme (The road to rural oblivion, 14 November). He mentions ancient woodland and says it needs legal protection. Actually ancient woodland (ie, wooded since 1600) already has legal protection, and “compensation planting” is required – the ratio is decided by English Nature, but may be a multiple of seven or even up to 30 times the area taken.
The legislation to protect ancient woodland may have the perverse effect of causing the most damaging option to be chosen. Highways England has run a public consultation, which blatantly favours the route through Binsted woods, 100 hectares of superb quality semi-natural broadleaved woodland. The woods have been here since the Domesday Book – huge, mysterious, unmanaged, full of fallen trees that have regrown from horizontal, and an incredibly rich hotspot for rare wildlife. But some parts have had a cleared period in the last 400 years, so are not designated as ancient woodland.
Those parts have regrown to be just as rich and diverse as the designated woodland beside them. But Highways England has ignored the quality of the woodland, omitting the non-designated parts of Binsted woods on many of its maps.
This route would also cause the death of Binsted village – partially in Binsted woods – and the loss of a much-loved area of the South Downs national park. It would be a national scandal.
Emma Tristram
Binsted, West Sussex
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