Northumberland National Park: New military training fears

22 April 1999

Extra troops and weapons training in Britain and a new generation of helicopters and rockets will bring even greater threats to the Northumberland National Park, say objectors at the reopened Public Inquiry into Ministry of Defence development proposals for the Otterburn Training Area.

Members of the National Park Consortium, a group of voluntary sector organisations that object to the proposals because of their impacts on the National Park, start to give evidence to the Inquiry this week (starting Thursday 22 April).

The MoD wants to train with the 45 tonne AS90 gun and the Multi-Launch Rocket System in the National Park, which means an extensive road building project, the loss of 25 hectares of wildlife habitat and damage to a beautiful landscape plus noisy firing and disruptive convoys on public roads.

A Public Inquiry was originally held in 1997 and then reopened on 23 March this year because of new information that had emerged since the Inquiry last sat.  The reopened Inquiry has already revealed information about a range of new guns and rocket launchers that would come to Otterburn if the proposed development went ahead.  These weapons are likely to cause significant environmental impacts which have not been properly examined and need to be taken into account.

The main concerns of the National Park Consortium are about:

 - The training requirements of 6,000 extra troops and an extra AS90 regiment being based in Britain;
 - The new Apache attack helicopter, which is about to come into service;
 - A new Multi-Launch Rocket System training rocket which will have significant environmental impacts;
 - A new generation of highly mobile guns and rockets which could fire from anywhere on the range;
 - A flying reconnaissance vehicle which could cause serious damage to important nature conservation sites when it lands
 - All the above have potentially significant impacts on wildlife, particularly ground nesting birds.

"The Ministry of Defence has made it clear that it wants to turn the Otterburn Training Area, at the heart of the Northumberland National Park, into Britain's major artillery firing range.  At the moment it has only assessed the effects of AS90 training and the all but obsolete M28 rocket, yet all these new weapons and other training bring impacts with them", said Angus Lunn, chairman of the Council for National Parks.

"If permission is granted and the roads are built the new types of training will inevitably follow and their environmental impacts must be assessed now. The information presented to the reopened Inquiry indicates that the impacts will be very substantial and in the case of the new rocket, even worse than the environmentally damaging M28 rocket which was at the centre of controversy at the Inquiry in 1997.

"What is even more worrying is that we are still only finding out about the impacts of some activities - like the flying reconnaissance vehicle - even though the MoD has long had plans to train with it at Otterburn.

"Now is the time for the MoD to bring forward all the information required so that the Secretary of State can make a decision with the facts clearly set out so that our troops can be properly trained while minimising the environmental damage to the British countryside".

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