Digging up Waun Mawn -- the costs and the benefits

I try, quite often on this blog, to explore issues raised by assorted faithful readers -- and today I have been giving some thought to something raised by Chris and others -- namely the damage done by MPP and his team of diggers to what is a very valuable and sensitive habitat.

Waun Mawn lies within the Preseli Special Area of Conservation, incorporating the Mynydd Preseli SSSI.  It's inside the National Park.  So it's valuable, and it is heavily protected by law.  The details are here:

https://www.naturalresources.wales/media/673203/Preseli%20SAC%20management%20plan.pdf 

http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/ProtectedSites/SACselection/sac.asp?EUCode=UK0012598

http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/ProtectedSites/SACselection/habitat.asp?FeatureIntCode=H4030

http://naturenet.net/status/sac.html

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/legal/liability/pdf/eld_guidance/ireland.pdf

In the area where the digs of last year and this year have taken place, there is thin peat and soil resting on a substrate of till and frost-shattered bedrock made of dolerite and meta-mudstones.  The vegetation in the vicinity of the proposed "proto-Stonehenge giant stone circle" is dry heath and wet heath -- it is not, as claimed by MPP, blanket bog.  The Pembrokeshire Coast National Park is charged with looking after it.  As we see on the web sites listed above, there are strict rules about damage to valuable habitats including SACs, and requirements relating to remediation and to penalties to be paid by offenders.  So we need to ask this question:  how much damage has been done, and is being done, by the archaeologists?

Well, last year the damage was quite considerable, since heavy machinery was used on the dig site and since the trackways up and down from the standing stone area were seriously churned up.  As we have seen in my posts from a year ago, the turf that was dug up from the half dozen or so rectangular dig sites was plopped back again in a rather haphazard fashion and in quite a hurry.  This is bound to have had a negative effect on the habitat and it is bound to have affected drainage characteristics.  Now here is a question:  did the National Park insist on minimal standards of habitat interference in advance of the work being done, and did they assess the damage afterwards?

As for this year, the scale of the work up on Waun Mawn is truly spectacular.  I haven't measured, but by a conservative estimate, no less than a thousand square metres of turf have been removed  -- and presumably put back again.  The archaeologists have done their best to be organized and tidy, but this is an exposed and very wet area, and conditions have not always been conducive to minimising environmental impact.   It would be rather too much to say that the area resembles the battlefield of the Somme, but it most certainly does not look very nice........

So here are some questions for the diggers and the National Park:

1.  Who signed off this digging programme?  In other words, what was the application procedure and what form did the consents take?

2.  What requirements were placed on the diggers relating to the protection of the SAC habitat?

3.  What assessment has been made, now that the dig is almost over,  relating to the restoration and remediation work undertaken?

4.  If the diggers have actually done damage on an unacceptable scale, what action does the PCNPA propose to take against them?  (Bear in mind that in present-day Pembrokeshire, we can get a Fixed Penalty Notice for £150 from a "Uniformed Enforcement Officer", for dropping a crisp packet in the street........)

This brings me to the question of costs and benefits.  Has anybody in the PCNPA actually asked whether the benefits perceived to flow from this dig actually do outweigh the cost of the environmental damage done?  How important was it to determine whether there really was a stone circle on Waun Mawn in the Neolithic or the Bronze Age?  Did Dyfed Archaeological Trust, Coflein, Natural Resources Wales and RCAMW express a view on this and have an input into the consent process?

Or was this large and expensive -- and damaging -- dig allowed to go ahead just to indulge the fantasies and the ambitions of one rather charismatic project leader?