LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Environmental campaigners demonstrated on the London streets and in tree-tops in the English countryside on Thursday against the construction of a new high-speed train line.
Police removed 15 activists who had climbed trees in woodland in Buckinghamshire, north of London, which are said to have inspired the fantasy world of Roald Dahl’s children’s books, while another group marched on parliament.
The HS2 project, which could cost up to £100 billion ($130 billion, 115 billion euros), will be Britain’s second high-speed line after HS1 — used by Eurostar in southeast England.
It will link London to the cities of central and northern England but it has caused outrage as its projected route cuts through swathes of countryside.
The HS2 Rebellion group accused British Prime Minister Boris Johnson of “hypocrisy” for approving the project in February while saying he was committed to protecting biodiversity.
“It’s a huge amount of money spent on destroying the environment for a very very small benefit,” London protester Eilidh Murray, 65, told AFP.
She said the authorities “should improve the infrastructure we’ve got instead”.
Another demonstrator, Vania Flaccomio, 27, said the project “does not make any sense in a climate emergency”.
The British parliament declared an environmental and climate emergency in a vote last year.
Outside London, treehouse protesters clashed with police in a woodland said to have inspired Dahl’s 1970 children’s book “Fantastic Mr Fox”.
Dahl, who died in 1990, lived in the Buckinghamshire village of Great Missenden, where there is now a museum to his life and work.
Steve Masters, 50, said he had slept in a makeshift treehouse every night for the past three months to try to stop construction of the rail line destroying the wood.
He said he wanted his three grandchildren to “grow up safe from the effects of climate change” and to protect “the literary memory of Roald Dahl and all those childhood memories”.
© Agence France-Presse
