Home to world’s busiest wildlife hospital (image: Lucy Pittaway)
Buckinghamshire is a small affluent county just outside London, and home to the town of Buckingham and many pretty villages. The TV series Midsomer Murders is often filmed here, due to the beautiful location. It does alas sit bang in the middle of the dreadful HS2 high-speed rail network, which has already decimated large parts of the county and its wildlife.
This county is home to wildflower meadows and churchyards filled with vegetation and beechwoods in the wetlands, all loved by local wildlife and migrating birds. Find more ways to help your local wildlife rescue and animal shelter.
Tiggywinkles is the world’s busiest wildlife hospital, and is located just outside Haddenham, a large village in Buckinghamshire. It started as a tiny outfit founded by Les Stocker and his wife and son, who used their own savings to start rescuing wildlife. He became a mountain of information and today his legacy is that thousands of creature are treated, and his knowledge is now put into wildlife veterinary manuals and courses for professionals.
Stop HS2 is the national campaign to stop the hugely disruptive and pointless high-speed rail project (heading up the campaign is wildlife TV presenter Chris Packham, who tried to bring legal action). We don’t need high-speed trains, we need better rolling stock and connections nationwide.
The lie that it will help the environment is proven by climate change experts who says it will do absolutely nothing (some of the proposed stations are for airport hubs?) and around 22,000 wildlife a year would be killed, comparing it to the present high-speed rail networks like TGV in France. Many wildlife see flooded tracks as rivers (like swans and ducks who will go looking for such sites). It’s also so now out-of-budget that it’s become a huge political white elephant. One of the worst decisions ever made, which has already destroyed countless forests and wildlife, and England’s second-largest pear tree.
