Permissions for fell race

[ghost]

It's disappointing to hear of this obstructive behaviour coming from Natural England. Where I live, a wealthy shooting syndicate has taken over a pheasant shoot which is mostly over SSSI land of incredible diversity and ecological sensitivity (NE have responsibility for all SSSI land). The syndicate has broken just about every SSSI rule by building illegal infrastructure along the river (shooting platforms, steps, concrete shooting platforms), bulldozing trees to make new tracks, felling trees etc - essentially turning the SSSI, a steep sided valley of ancient oak woodland into a shooting theme park infested by 30,000 pheasants. Despite many people contacting NE via e-mail and letters in the local press highlighting the breaches of the law, nothing has been done by NE in the 6 months since it all started. For them to block fell races when we all bend over backwards to protect the environment demonstrates a severe case of double standards . They claim to be underfunded, but a lot of the problem seems to be that the board is riddled with conflicts of interest (the pro-shooting lobby for starters) to the extent that their remit to protect SSSIs is meaningless.