Don’t cut life from our countryside, pleads RSPB

Billboards are to be put up close to the home of a West Conservative minister to urge him against funding cuts to services vital to the countryside.

Campaigners from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) have targeted the constituencies of ministers responsible for deciding on budget cuts.

Billboards reading “Don’t cut the life from our countryside” will be put up in fields and at road junctions, with banners going up in towns and villages. Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin, MP for West Dorset, is one of three senior Tory figures who will be picketed.

In Mr Letwin’s constituency, billboards are to be placed at RSPB nature reserves at Radipole Lake, Swannery and Lodmoor, all in Weymouth.

The posters will even be pulled through the streets behind bicycles in Weymouth and Dorchester.

The RSPB’s concern comes hard on the heels of the Rural Coalition, a collective of landowners, conservationists and business groups, warning that the countryside faces meltdown if the Government cuts spending indiscriminately.

Dr Mark Avery, the RSPB’s director of conservation, said: “They have to make meaningful cuts without harming vital services.

“We have been arguing very strongly that the natural environment is not the place to make swingeing cuts.”

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne and Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman, who will also play key roles in the decision on spending cuts, are the other two ministers being targeted by campaigners.