The Friends of Lever Park

I’d like to respond to Go Ape’s letter in the Chorley Guardian. Steve Sutherland is Go Ape’s business development officer. He writes a good example of corporate spin!

Dear editor, I would like to respond to the letter by Bob Dootson of Friends of Lever Park (Guardian, November 26) and correct some of the erroneous statements made. As a representative of Friends of Lever Park, Mr Dootson is fully aware that more than a third of the trees removed have nothing to do with the Go Ape course but have been felled by the land managers, United Utilities, as part of their scheduled woodland management programme due to disease or dangerous condition. However, he chooses to attribute those tree works to Go Ape in order to exaggerate the impact of the course will have on the woods.

No we agree with you, Steve. Two-thirds (i.e. thirteen) of the the trees were felled by Go Ape. Go Ape felled the trees without planning permission, without informing Chorley and without even asking United Utilities. 

He goes on to claim that ‘we estimate a further 40 trees would have to be felled’. This is not true.

The estimate of 40 trees was based on Go Ape’s own plans for the course. We estimated that each zip wire needs 6 feet of clearance on each side of the wire to allow a safe ride. Many of the zip wire routes currently go through a high density of trees. Anyone with a copy of the Go Ape plans , a tape measure, a friend and a couple of hours to spare will come up with a figure of about 40 trees. 

The more accurate, but less sensational truth, is between three and five.

Perhaps Go Ape have revised the routes of the zip wires to avoid the trees? If so, they will need to re-apply for planning permission. If they only fell three trees, they will still need to re-apply for planning permission. We will oppose the felling of any further trees.

Mr Dootson could have asked Go Ape or United Utilities for this information to be confirmed before making his sensational and misleading accusations in the press.

The original planning application gave permission for only three trees to be felled. Now that’s misleading.

Readers should be aware that Mr Dootson and other representatives of Friends of Lever Park have been offered round table meetings with the council, Go Ape and United Utilities to discuss the course construction and deal with any concerns that they may have.Mr Dootson and Friends of Lever Park have refused outright.

While we have no issues with Go Ape as a company, the only terms on which we will meet Go Ape are to discuss the exit strategy for Go Ape from Lever Park. Any other meeting will be effectively acknowledging that Go Ape are here to stay. We have explained all this before. 

At Go Ape we always work hard to minimise the impact of our course on the woodland. Where trees have to be felled we make sure that our mitigation measures more than compensate for this. For example, at Rivington our environmentalists identified that there was a lack of ground vegetation for small animals to feed and shelter in. As a result we are planting over 300m of native species hedgerow to provide this.

The construction of Go Ape has already destroyed a layer of ground vegetation. Planting new hedgerows is merely a PR exercise.

This is in addition to planting three new trees for every one that is removed.

The new trees will not reach maturity for a hundred years. Would Go Ape prefer to plant a group of suitable conifers, wait a hundred years until they reach maturity, then build their course? No, I thought not.

We also wanted to do something to encourage and protect the local bat population so we will erect a four chamber bat house to do just that.

The best way to encourage the local bat population would have been to leave the existing bat population undisturbed.

United Utilities have been criticised by Friends of Lever Park for allowing a small number of trees to be felled – and yet this is the same United Utilities that has planted more than 50,000 new trees in the West Pennine area this year alone.

The West Pennine area is huge and 50,000 new trees are a drop in the ocean. We’re talking about Lever Park, a small but important local amenity.

At Go Ape we will continue do our best to ensure that anyone with such concerns are able to discuss these with us at anytime. We would reiterate our invitation to Mr Dootson and the Friends of Lever Park talk to us directly about their concerns. They may find that we are not the demons that they claim we are.

The Friends of Lever Park have no problem with Go Ape. We imagine that Go Ape will be very angry with Chorley for botching the planning process so badly. We just believe that Lever Park is unsuitable for an enterprise as big as this. We blame chorley Council for disregarding its own policies, byelaws and public feeling and allowing this theme park to be built in a totally unsuitable location.