Save our wildlife research labs A research body that conducts groundbreaking investigations into the effects of climate change on plants and animals in the UK and Europe has been instructed to axe one in three of its staff.
The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), which identified that British springtime now arrives three weeks earlier than 50 years ago, is set to lose 200 of its 600 staff because of restructuring plans from its parent organisation, the Natural Environment Research Council.
CEH sites in Banchory, Scotland; Monks Wood, Cambridgeshire; Dorset and Oxford would close along with its administration centre in Swindon. The centre’s remaining activity will be concentrated on four remaining sites at Wallingford, Lancaster, Bangor and Edinburgh.
An independent report commissioned from consultants Deloitte estimated that CEH could achieve stability entirely from external funding. An extra £1.4m could be secured, says Prospect, instead of a restructuring scheme which is likely to cost the taxpayer £45m compared to the total CEH budget of £30m.
The plans were tabled despite an independent review of CEH science, commissioned by NERC last year, which graded all the centre’s five science programmes as being of international quality and recommended keeping the current nine-site structure.
Prospect national officer Tony Bell said: “We want MPs and other concerned stakeholders to back our call for additional funding to NERC, the Office of Science and Technology and Defra. We believe these cuts are cost driven and have not taken into account their impact on science.”
CEH members asked fellow Prospect members, consumers and other stakeholders to lobby against the proposals by writing to their local MPs. We understand that NERC received over 1,000 formal objections to its proposals.
The NERC council met on 8 March 2006 to decide CEH's future and said it intends to press ahead with most of the proposed cuts. Prospect said this was tantamount to disarming the UK in the battle against global warming.
One of CEH's labs featured in Sir David Attenborough's "Life in the Undergrowth" series on BBC1. He described the closure plans as "very disturbing" and said "These labs are world leaders in biodiversity research. It seems a terrible thing that places with a world reputation are being closed down."
Read what other experts are saying about the closure.
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