LeadburnWood

Many of you will know that Millenium Farm owned by Glenrath has had an outbreak of avian flu that has led to it being forced to quarantine, restricting access and having to cull its birds. As a result, a security team has been deployed to restrict access to the farm, including the tracks down to it from the layby at our woodland entrance. Several people have let us know that in the last few days the security team manning the layby end of this track have been trying to turn back our woodland visitors at the turning area in from our entrance layby. This includes Wendy and myself on separate occasions, but we have continued into the wood without further challenge when we informed the security person that Leadburn Community Woodland was owned by Friends of LCW (rather than by Glenrath). As far as we are aware, we should not be being stopped from walking in the woodland as Leadburn Community Woodland is owned by us and not by the farm (who only own the track down to the farm).

Although we are sympathetic to Glenrath’s current avian flu problems and the need to quarantine the farm area, we have not been informed by government or any other agency that this affects access to our woodland. Nor have Glenrath asked us for a temporary closure. We would obviously hope that our visitors stick to our path network (as they usually do), therefore not going anywhere nearer to the chicken sheds. There is no reason to stop going to the woodland and this security team cannot stop you going in. The security team seem to have been employed by the government rather than directly by Glenrath. The person in the car is just an employee and we are awaiting a reply from his boss to discuss the situation and make sure that all other employees based at the entrance to the woodland do not continue to try to stop people from visiting the woodland.

Rik Smith