ON Friday, we were awakened by the sound of chain saws.

We were horrified to find a team working on behalf of Bury Council carrying out a massacre of one of the most colourful mixed hedgerows in Tottington, between Bury Road and Leemans Hill estate.

We tried desperately to stop the work by attempting to contact the official who had sanctioned it. But he was "in a meeting" and by the time he rang back at lunchtime, the chain saw gang had almost finished the job. Elderberry, alder, English cherry and lilac trees, which had been growing for more than 35 years, were fed through the shredder and for no other reason than that the council want to make it easier for a huge multi-blade mower to "keep the site tidy". There was no thought for the fact that a smaller mower could have been used, as councils do throughout the land on wooded picnic sites.

How dare Bury Council profess to be up-in-arms at the destruction of local wildlife sites like Barracks Lodge and then carry out such vandalism themselves on their own land?

And how dare they do the work at the height of the bird nesting season. Even if trees were checked for nests, does no one at Bury Council realise that birds feed their fledglings on food from the very trees the council has destroyed?

After several residents protested strongly, the council official decided in almost God-like fashion to spare some of the hedge nearest to Chestnut Avenue, though he said they would be "thinned at the bottom" to deter fly-tipping. So now every tree in Bury is to be robbed of lower foliage?

Wildlife depends on thick ground cover that a hedge provides. That is why there is such a strong movement to protect them in Britain, and why crop farmers are pilloried for ripping them out.

It is bad enough for Tottington to be swallowed by houses but for the council to destroy such beauty on its own land is indefensible.

FRANK WOOD,

Bury Road,

Tottington.