Bad time to cut research funds

From the Swindon Advertiser, first published Saturday 21st Jan 2006.

THE announcement by the government to cut funding for wildlife science research shows an appalling ignorance of the threat to wildlife in the UK from pollution, pesticides and climate change.

Two hundred scientists from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology research centres in Cambridgeshire, Dorset and Aberdeenshire face redundancy.

Also threatened is the CEH laboratory in Oxford.

The CEH Headquarters is in Swindon, as well as the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), also based in Swindon and involved in funding scientific research. The departments of Environment and Trade and Industry purport to save a little more than a million pounds a year but the changes will cost £45 million.

If these cuts go ahead the UK will lose its status as a leader in the field at a time when threats to the UK and all global habitats and biodiversity are facing ever greater dangers.

B HUGHES (Green Party).

Swindon

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