Wildlife charity forced to pay after serial fly-tippers dump waste on historic woodland site – ‘It really lowers morale’

A wildlife charity that has fallen victim to repeated fly-tipping is having to spend money earmarked for conservation work on the cost of clearing up the waste instead.

The Woodland Trust, the largest woodland conservation charity in the United Kingdom, has seen a rise in illegal dumping on its Smithills Estate site.

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The site, which is located on the edge of Bolton and West Pennine moors, is the charity’s largest English site and composed of farmlands, moorlands and woodlands.

However, it has become a hotspot for fly-tipping, with 21 incidents being reported since August.

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The duty of disposing of the waste falls on the landowner, meaning that The Woodland Trust must pay to have the rubbish taken away.

Speaking to GB News, the charity said: “We use funds we would have wanted to use for conservation

“This would improve the site for everyone, animals and humans, but instead we’ve got to use that money to pay to move the waste.”

The charity said that this diversion of funds impacts the morale of the community, particularly the volunteers.

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“Our volunteers who do an incredible job, they work so hard removing litter from our site, and, um, they travel miles between and removing litter. And this definitely affects their well-being because they see it constantly happening.”

Volunteers at the Smithills Estate find the act of fly-tipping “demoralising”, as it “takes away” from the work they really want to do, such as tree planting and managing the woodlands.

The charity added: “It’s the cycle of neglect that then attracts further dumping.”

“When the space is looked after there’s that peer pressure. It stops more people from doing it.”

The Woodland Trust is working with enforcement officers at Bolton Council to monitor the waste and help prevent additional incidents occurring.

Despite the rise in incidents, the charity stressed that it is really important for anyone who spots fly-tipping to report to the relevant authority.

“The more people that inform the authorities, means the more likely we are to find these people and trace them back.

“We don’t want people to be deterred from reporting these incidents because they think nothing is happening, because people are getting prosecuted and people are getting caught.

“So we just have to keep on persisting,” they stressed to The People’s Channel.

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