September 2025
Here where we live, in the beautiful South Wales Valleys, the mountain of Mynydd Llanhilleth is next door to Mynydd Maen. In a recent bird survey, we were delighted to hear that three breeding pairs of long-eared owls had been confirmed. This is a wonderful thing, especially considering there were only 32 breeding pairs in the whole of Wales, at the last count.
What is less wonderful is that this particular bird count was being conducted with a view to siting 7 huge (180m tall) wind turbines on Mynydd Llanhilleth. As we watch with dismay, protections for some of our most precious wildlife are being dismissed and eroded by planning processes for Developments of National Significance (DNS) across Wales. Although the Future Generations Wales Act and Planning Policy Wales require developers to take especial care of biodiversity, what happens in practice is that mitigation measures are proposed. Mitigation, of course, assumes that harm will be caused and then remedied afterwards. As a group, we are doing our utmost to remind the planning inspectors of their responsibilities to balance both the climate and nature emergencies during the DNS planning process.
Our group, the Mynydd Maen Action Group are already fighting three live proposals on our own mountain but are also supporting the communities living in the shadow of the proposed Mynydd Llanhilleth development. Not only will the human residents be sandwiched between the turbines of Mynydd Maen and Mynydd Llanhilleth, but the wildlife will once again be disturbed and threatened. There will be few places of sanctuary left.
The deadline for objecting to Mynydd Llanhilleth Wind Farm is midnight on Friday 5th September 2025. Please, if you read this in time, would you send an email objecting? Our group have produced a programme to help write emails, which you can access here: https://www.mynydd-maen.co.uk/the-proposals/
Or you can write your own email if you wish – once again the details can be found using the link above.
In other news, we have two hearings for Cil-lonydd Solar Farm in early September. Cil-lonydd will share a grid connection with adjacent Mynydd Maen and Trecelyn windfarms, also proposed for our mountain. We hope to let you know how we got on in our next update. We are very lucky to have been able to engage Geoff Sinclair of Environment Information Services to help us with Mynydd Maen and Trecelyn, and are looking forward to calling on his knowledge and experience when we attend those hearings later in 2025.
Grace Lloyd-Evans
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