Supporters

If you would like to show your organisation’s support for the campaign, please send your logo, website link and up to 50 words on why you’re against the proposals for the estuary airport to [email protected]

We will publish politically neutral organisations who wish to support the campaign to stop the estuary airport.

 

Kent Wildlife Trust has been helping to protect the whole of Kent and Medway since 1958 and is dedicated to protecting wildlife and wild habitats for everyone to enjoy. The trust does not support a Thames Estuary airport and is calling on its members and supporters to sign up to. Read more on how you can get involved with this Stop Estuary Airport flyer.

 

The RSPB does not support airport expansion be it in the Thames Estuary, at Manston, Lydd or elsewhere and has serious concerns about the current forecasts for future growth in air travel. Set against the current level of airport provision in the South East of England, the economic and social value of further expansion in aviation is far outweighed by its economic, social and environmental costs.

Airport expansion would be accompanied by a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change, which presents a significant threat to local, national and international biodiversity.

Friends of the North Kent Marshes alongside the RSPB, Medway Council and a broad coalition of millions we remain wholly opposed to the construction of an airport anywhere in the Thames Estuary because of the immense damage it could cause to the area’s internationally important wildlife and the wider environment and the impact it would have on carbon emissions.

The whole issue was exhaustively investigated between 2002 and 2005 in the Government’s Aviation White Paper. All the key players, including the aviation industry, contributed. The idea of an airport in the Thames Estuary was conclusively ruled out. In addition to the unprecedented environmental damage and the resulting massive legal implications, the investigation found that an estuary airport did not make sense economically, would not meet the requirements of the aviation industry and presented a significantly higher risk of ‘bird strike’ than at any other major airport in the UK.

No matter how impressive Boris Johnson’s, Lord Foster’s or any other estuary airport plan may look the threats and the risks remain the same. An airport in the Thames Estuary is a complete non-starter ecologically, environmentally and economically, and to go through all these arguments again is a complete waste of everyone’s time.

We believe that an airport anywhere in the Thames Estuary is unacceptable because:

• Building an airport in the estuary would be an act of environmental vandalism.
• It’s home to thousands of birds and welcomes hundreds of thousands more migratory species every year, with aviation industry experts estimating the likelihood of bird strike with aircraft is 12 times more likely within the estuary compared with any other UK airport.
• The estuary is unique and so large that it could not be recreated anywhere else in Europe, so mitigation is not possible.
• The argument for a massive increase in aviation capacity cannot fit with the UK Governments targets to reduce emissions.

As communities, never forget that thousands of people live on the Hoo Peninsula, we support the RSPB response to the big scale proposals tabled by the likes of Boris Johnson, Sir Norman Foster and John Olsen which is equally big and grandiose. It is the sustainable habitat management of our landscape along the whole Thames Estuary; called Futurescape. Creating an area where development happens sympathetically to enhance and increase the unique natural spaces of the region to benefit people and wildlife.

We will not be deterred from this goal by the fanciful imaginings of the Mayor of London, Lord Foster et al.

Ours IS the marsh country down by the river, within, as the river winds, twenty miles of the sea and we will fight any attempt to destroy our communities, our cultural heritage and our globally important natural heritage with the utmost vigour.

Friends of the North Kent Marshes.
Conservation and Communities United.