NICK Champion may be the National Trust s champion pr person - sorry, communications and marketing manager - but he needs to check his facts before he communicates with your newspaper and markets his wares to the rest of us. I and my friends have

NICK Champion may be the National Trust's champion pr person - sorry, 'communications and marketing manager' - but he needs to check his facts before he communicates with your newspaper and 'markets' his wares to the rest of us.

I and my friends have never said that the Trust is intent on flooding all of the thousands of acres of land in question. We have said that it wants to buy up and flood or jungle-fie some of the finest food-growing Cambridgeshire Fen land and the evidence for that is available to anyone who pays attention. Mr Champion needs to pay attention to what his colleagues are doing, planning and publishing.

The Trust recently revealed to me and to fellow parish councillors that a new 'mere' (a flooded area) has been created at 'Tubney Fen,' an invented name for parts of Reach and Swaffham Fens. It was also revealed that a further area of Burwell Fen is to be 're-wetted' (flooded) with an underground 'bund' hopefully to prevent the floodwater spreading. The latter brings the flooded areas nearer to the village of Burwell and it will bring more insects with it.The Trust already boasts of 1,800 different species of flies at Wicken Fen and I am sure that the residents of Burwell look forward to the arrival of this lot and their mates, the mosquitoes, on their doorsteps or into their gardens and windows. And much of the rest of 'Tubney Fen' is already junglefied with ragwort and thistles.

Further, the Trust wants to build a monstrous new bridge over Reach Lode and appears to have based its case upon the bizarre assumption that visitors to Anglesey Abbey are likely to desire to push on to Wicken Fen on foot, by bicycle, or on horseback. The new bridge, as I understand it, is intended to respond to the assumed desire by helping to facilitate a 'through-route.' Presumably, if some visitors to, say, Wimpole Hall, were to express a similar desire to make their way via a 'through-route' to both Anglesey Abbey and Wicken Fen, the Trust would be bothering all of the communities on that 'through-route' in order to meet that desire.

The National Trust is on to a loser here and no amount of persuasive PR from Mr Champion will gainsay that. Your readers should sign the 'SaveOurFens' E-Petition at -

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/SaveOurFens/

GEOFFREY WOOLARD

Chapel Farm

River Bank

Upware