Chris Packham has blasted Heineken for chopping down a 300-acre orchard.
Chris Packham has blasted Heineken for chopping down a 300-acre orchard
The 62-year-old TV star, who is best known for presenting ‘Winterwatch’, was left furious after the beverage company’s subsidiary Bulmers uprooted thousands of trees in Penrhos Orchard - which is located on the Offa’s Dyke path in Monmouthshire, south Wales - after overestimating demand for its drinks.
Chris told The Times newspaper: “What a tragically sad story and a story of abject short-sightedness.
“They could have offered the land for sale with the trees on it.
“It could have been turned into a glamping site, a leisure resource, or given to a local community group.”
Heineken - which plans to sell the land - emphasised there was a “huge surplus” of bittersweet apples that “have no other use than creating cider”, and insisted the company had conformed to the Wildlife Act.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the beverage conglomerate said: “In order to make best use of the land to grow other crops, the bush orchards had to be removed.
“All the wood is shredded for biomass. The bushes were removed in line with the Wildlife Act.”
However, the ‘Autumnwatch’ presenter insisted this was “almost irrelevant” considering the country was in the middle of a “biodiversity crisis”.
He explained to Sky News: “In a biodiversity crisis, I would say it's bordering on unethical and certainly immoral because resources like that ought to be passed on to people who can use them to enrich wildlife and human life.”
The TV presenter added he was now abstaining from all Heineken products due to their actions.
He said: “I'm not drinking any more of it, because I just think we want companies in our lives that are looking after our planet and our future and our children's future.
“They had an opportunity to do that and they've just squandered it.
“I think that with these big companies, the only way [can make our voice heard] is to boycott them, hit them in the pocket. Because I do think, I genuinely think, it's tragic what they've done when we could have helped to tackle the biodiversity crisis, the climate emergency, physical and mental health issues.
“All of these could have been helped just by them saying, ‘Listen, we're not going to use it again, why don't we give it over to the local community?’”