“Paws up for campaigners who’ve fought to save and preserve us all”

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot, with a pink hotel, a boutique and a swinging hot spot...” So went the song Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell, released 50 years ago.

So little has changed! Take Smithy Woods, for instance.

Developers were planning to bulldoze over that glorious mass of trees and foliage and the magnificent carpet of bluebells, as well as decimating the setts that housed my Smithy Wood cousins for generations.

Not to mention destroying the precious families of squirrels, foxes and other wildlife and their habitats.

And all for yet another one of those “tea, wee and chips and beans for me” motorway service stations!

I understand perfectly that, with expanding bladders and rumbling stomachs, you humans welcome the sight of a motorway service station when you’ve been travelling for hours and hours.

‘Tiredness can kill, take a break’ the motorway signs declare.

True, they can even be lifesaving.

However, why do they have to make us homeless when there are plenty of those places dotted up and down the M1 already?

After all, once our homes are gone, they’re gone, not least their inhabitants.

Of course, you humans all need roads, homes, shopping areas, motorways, stop-off points etc., to keep the wheels of life turning and turning, but some greedy developers just don’t know where to stop.

How much wildlife and how many trees and wildflowers, flora and fauna, have been destroyed and replaced by vast expanses of Tarmac and concrete jungles? I daren’t think!

Anyway, thanks to the wonderful Save Smithy Wood campaign, it has now been saved.

At least for the time being.

Several other campaigns are still under way. Don’t even get me started on HS2!

Myself, other brocks, squirrels, foxes, deer and all wildlife would like to give a big ‘paws up’ for all the campaigners who’ve fought to save and preserve us all.

They’re appreciated more than they’ll ever know.