WHILE there are encouraging signs from new members regarding the protection of our Forest, the Cabinet continues to squander taxpayers' money on illegally customising our forest land by eradicating wildlife and plant-life – the very 'flora and fauna' that the Verderers were constituted to protect. I appeal to all councillors to envisage the damage to our unique planet caused by these so-called regeneration policies. In truth they are no more than 'asset-releasing schemes'. Strange how history repeats itself. I have again photographed evidence of the cruel, expensive and indeed futile trapping of creatures in buckets at the Northern Quarter. Last year, vast sums of our money were spent on trapping. Creatures were translocated into fenced off compounds and then the amphibian fences had to be cut to release them. In their ignorance, they let them go into areas where rare moths and butterfly colonies breed. I ask, what is the point of concentrating huge sums of money on the removal of newts anyway when we know that there are actually over 1,300 recorded species of rare plants and wildlife on site? And what will happen to the thousands of anthills, the base of the food-chain? What plans are in store for the ants, including the protected red, yellow and black bog-ants that live in the Northern Quarter? One can only assume that after the blitzkrieg on the bats, the destruction of our mining heritage and the cruel translocation of the great crested newts, we can now expect the arrival of the mechanical shovels to obliterate the ants too. Where will it stop? – Cllr Andrew Gardiner (Ind), Forest of Dean District Council, Lydbrook and Ruardean.