Forums › Rave › Clubbing & Raving › Concern over rural raves
Concern over rural raves
04 August 2004 07:41
The Forestry Commission is worried about the number of raves in rural Norfolk and Suffolk.
It claims that an average of two parties are held each week, with four broken up last weekend alone.
The raves pose a threat to Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) and the habitats of ground-nesting birds and rare flora.
Sparks and flames from campfires and cigarettes heighten the extreme fire risk in forests.
Mike Taylor, operations manager for East Anglia, said: “They are becoming a major problem for us and we are in discussion with the police as to how to stop them.
“They average two a week but we closed down four at the weekend.
“In terms of damage, there are SSSIs, Special Protection Areas and ground-nesting birds, all of which can be disturbed by these activities. It’s pretty serious.
“They can often trash a site and probably do not perceive that they are doing any damage.”
On Sunday, police moved in to break up a rave on Forestry Commission land at Gasthorpe, near Thetford.
Pigs on a neighbouring farm were disturbed by the loud music, with one animal suffering a broken leg and several litters abandoned by startled sows.
Following the rave, partygoers said they were shocked to learn that the disturbance had caused animals distress.
A spokesman said: “It is never our intention to cause problems and no one would set out to deliberately distress or harm animals.
“All we are is a group of people who love our music. We try our best not to upset anyone.”
Chief Insp Carl Edwards, of Norfolk police, said: “We have had a meeting with the Forestry Commission and we are currently looking at our options.
“There is legislation protecting SSSIs, forest bylaws and we also have the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. It is a question of deciding which tactic would be most effective.
“Obviously we aren’t going to go charging into a forest in riot gear to break things up.
“We need to work closely with the Forestry Commission so we know exactly what damage is being done where.”
yea i saw a load of deer carcasses that got scared by stuff into oncomeing traffic at a party at the south downs.. it did kinda make me think…
the medis are bastards and they seem incapable of portraying the truthful and positive aspect of the FP scene, however…
…this has to be THE major flaw of freeparties at the mo. although the parties are in nature coz we love it in all its beauty,the bass from our systems is a major disturbance to the local ecosystem and so fucks the very thing we’ve come to appreciate. Catch 22 anyone? this is (probably the only valid) one of a number of complaints the ob and tory community has of our events, yet one that we should be able to sort out together. the problem for us is that if we use the same site loads, we get busted, but this means we end up spreading the damage around. if those tory fucks could get their head round our ting, then we could have established sites with those slick bass absorbing rods you can get to stick in the forest floor. hey ho. way i justify it to myself is it encourages and nurtures a respect and love of nature that is essential to the success of the human race.
still, it’d be be nice if there was a solution.
ideas anyone?
two issues are getting confused here by the media.
firstly, Forestry Commission are not whinging middle englanders – nor are they a part of the Police.
They are hard working public servants who do a lot of positive work to keep those areas open to the public; often despite protests from the conservative landowners and developers who want to have those places either fenced off or worse still, cleared and redeveloped into something more profitable.
I do think they (FC) often do not signpost SSSIs and other important places enough; but it is also up to party crews to avoid these areas! Go and look on maps, google, the Forestry sites themselves.
If you really care about the environment; there may come times when you have to find a new venue or even not party in that area.
As for livestock disturbance, whilst it is true pigs and particularly nursing sows do not like loud noise; I suspect that a lot of these incidents are caused by people straying into livestock holding areas whilst exploring rather than rigs being set up right next to livestock areas (which is as bad as setting up next to the local maternity ward or creche 🙁 )
another thing that really pisses off Farmer Giles (understandably IMO) is a bunch of cars blocking the access routes when he needs to do his work on Sunday and get to his land.
And wanton destruction or contamination of anything to do with the rural economny like crops or agricultural equipment (which sadly, has happened at recent parties) is inexcusable– its hardly suprising that the authorities go in heavy if stuff like this happens.
Remember that whilst the countryside is a fun area for us lot (and I live in a city/suburban area like many others); it is the workplace and livelihood of a lot of people.
I’m sure if some of you got into work one Monday and your managers said your employers were bankrupt because angry farmers had trashed your office server room with a muck-spreader and let sheep eat all the network cables many people would be pissed off once the reality of no wage packet set in – so don’t do this to the farmers stuff!
i’ve recently been trying my best to work with landowners… writing to farmers or those who own estates to find out if they are sympathetic and will consider a one-off or annual party on their land.
with some (limited) success i might add.
there is so little real countryside left that any damage to wildlife habitats is too much.
something that might sound like a lot of work, but doesn’t take long with a few of you and a shovel is to dig a trench and line it with sawdust. instant toilet. for the really adventurous among you, you could hang a piece of material in front of it, light some incense and call it the ‘ladies’.
as it says above, check maps, google etc, but also be aware that farmers use land for different purposes at different times of year; just because it was ok last month, it might not be the case this month. check it out first
come off it guys, im concerned about the woodland (every week conservation society) but the damage that farmers do to our countryside with intensive farming not only dwarfs every partys waste but also put them AGAINST nature, at the end of the day they are just part of the system, so this removes their right of complaint about minor disturbances. as you guys said, there isnt much countryside left because of the greedy fuckers in charge, so again i wouldnt listen to those fucks for a second, they have less green cred than nike.
the loos are a quality idea, loon, but the FC and NT hate holes in the floor (yea i know its better than pioson by piss, try tellin them that). at that 10 rigger on welsh beach summer before last really fucked the local ecosystem, i was there a week later helping to contain the algae that had been created from piss and shit- let me tell you it stank. and it killed bout 30 birds and countless other gubbins. wouldnt happen if it was legal…
SSSI’s should always be avoided, but ravin up the landed gentry’s estate and isolated farmland is beyond criticism.
i mean, every single criticism of raves (including the parking and safety issues) by the system could be avoided if they accepted us as an actual part of society, instead of bogeymanning us up. still, prove em wrong in the mean time eh?
be careful not to confuse landed gentry (who sit on their arses and collect rent) and tenant farmers (who do the shitwork!)
Tenant famers have to rent the land and all the risk of the business is passed to them – they are the ones often genuinely disrupted by raves etc when they can’t get their work done!
Also FC are just tenants on landowners property as well – they rent the bits of it where wildlife and rare plants are to stop the landowner redeveloping them.
I agree some FC officials can be overly restrictive and bureaucratic – but others have been turning a “blind eye” to parties in the forest since the 1970s when the first generation hippies used to have them; provided we don’t trash places.
For the moment we do have to be nice to the FC lot – although they can’t nick you directly they are part of Government and can (and do) work with the Old Bill if need be to keep people out of places and pass on information about vehicles etc.
There’s also a new EU rule about contanimation of agricultural land by manure (of all species!) which is why there is a fuss about the adjacent fields being used as improvised latrines.
I think though if we can hold out for a year things are gonna change drastically – the fat EU agricultural subsidies are disappearing as the rich countries don’t want to fund the new “ex-soviet” entrants and this is bound to result in a LOT of bankrupt and abandoned agricultural lands (or maybe even Farmer Giles accepting a rave or two in his buildings as an extra source of income I’m sure we can have a whip round for the use of the building, running water, WCs and electricity etc so everyone ends up happy…)
This is one of the things that upset me about the Czech Tek – the us of the nearby forest as a toilet – it was disgusting. Most ravers seem completely unable to dig a hole – travellers however (perhaps because they have to live at the site rather than turn up for a night and leave again, always have a shovel to hand.
Also all the dogs in Czech had a brilliant time chasing all the voles, but personally I found the carcass’ littered all over the site quite disturbing.
Czech Tek is usually a legal event, organised to by the local mafia who arrange loos, litter collection, drinking water etc but this year was the first ILLEGAL Czech Tek and although everyone made the effort to bag up the rubbish I didn’t see anyone take any with them and then once the police stormed the site anyone remaining weren’t given the option to to hang around and finish clearing up.
The site was in the middle of a forest up in the mountains – it WAS a very beautiful area.
0
Voices
6
Replies
Tags
This topic has no tags
Forums › Rave › Clubbing & Raving › Concern over rural raves
