For several decades a proposed 14 mile / 20 km long motorway extension has hung over the Gwent Levels – and its five SSSis and a Special Area of Conservation – south of Newport in South Wales. Charlie was invited to visit the area by Ian Rappel, chief-executive of Gwent Wildlife Trust (GWT), and in January 2019 spent a really interesting day looking at the Levels and then at GWT’s Magor Marsh Nature Reserve with Ian, GWT’s deputy CEO Gemma Bode, and Sarah Harris, the Trust’s Senior Press and Communication Officer.
The conversation is in turns thoughtful, forthright, and philosophical and begins on a small foot bridge overlooking one of the Level’s ‘reens’, the ancient drainage ditches that house so much of the site’s remarkable biodiversity.
• Gwent Wildlife Trust (external link)
• Gwent Levels campaign video ‘Leisure’ narrated by Peaky Blinders and The Detectorists actress Aimee-Ffion Edwards (external link)
• Campaign Against the Levels Motorway (CALM) podcast on Lush Player (external link)