We are staging a swan-themed demo at the opening of the new ice centre. We will be protesting the wrecking of Oxbow island as a wildlife refuge.
Somehow, the swans have managed to raise eight cygnets, despite a range of new threats from the works on the island during their nesting season, however we’ve heard reports that resident otters have been driven away.
We fear that when the ice centre opens, there will be a deluge of visitors trampling the previously secluded island and what’s more – due to the opening of a new cafe – they may well be taking their disposable plastic rubbish there too. So please do come along and make your voice heard for our imperiled wildlife that have already faced so much destruction and disturbance from the construction of a 95% bigger venue.
We’ll meet at the Lee Valley Ice Centre car park, Lea Bridge Road, at 10.30am on Saturday 17th June.
If you’d like to read in more detail about our concerns regarding Oxbow island, in context of the new ice centre development, please check out our open letter to the Chief Executive of the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority here: https://www.saveleamarshes.org.uk/2022/06/30/our-response-to-the-lvrpa-chief-executive-re-the-lower-lee-valley/
We’d love it if you could join us dressing up! We have created this downloadable swan mask for you to use on the day. https://www.saveleamarshes.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Swan-mask.pdf
Here are the instructions for creating your mask:
1. Measure the distance between the pupils of your eyes. (The easiest way to do this is to stand in front of a mirror, hold a ruler horizontally against the bridge of your nose, and close first one eye and then the other.)
2. Open the PDF and click “Print”. Set the page size to A4 and the orientation to Landscape. Set the scale to X (%), where X is the distance that you measured in millimetres (mm).
3. Cut out your mask.
4. Affix it to cardboard using glue and then cut out the cardboard round the mask outline.
5. Attach a stick to one side of the mask, or alternatively use the straps from an old face mask and attach them to the side of the mask. Voilà!
Hi! Thanks so for organising this, so important and much needed. Some friends and I are hosting a healing circle for the soil of Leyton Marsh tomorrow at 7pm. We reached out to SLM a bit ago but didn’t, it’s a bit short notice but if anyone wants to come by to either attend or talk about campaigns we’d love to have you in the space. Either way I will make sure to shout out this protest at the event