Copy of let­ter sent to the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA):

I re­cent­ly vis­it­ed the Cumaca Trail along the Tu­rure Riv­er. It was ex­treme­ly dis­turb­ing to see the dev­as­ta­tion caused by quar­ry­ing ac­tiv­i­ty that has oc­curred since ap­prox­i­mate­ly mid-March.

One recog­nis­es the need for de­vel­op­ment and raw ma­te­ri­als for the con­struc­tion in­dus­try, but sure­ly this can be done in a less de­struc­tive man­ner? Sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal bi­ol­o­gists have used this site in par­tic­u­lar as a "pris­tine" site for both ter­res­tri­al and aquat­ic re­search. I fear that this site and the as­so­ci­at­ed riv­er are in jeop­ardy of be­com­ing ir­re­versibly com­pro­mised.

Hav­ing con­tact­ed some of these re­searchers, they are equal­ly con­cerned for this now threat­ened habi­tat and in sup­port of my com­ments they al­so have signed this let­ter. To my knowl­edge, it is not known if the EMA has looked in­to this mat­ter. Nor do I have in­for­ma­tion about any ap­proval for this ex­tent of ac­tiv­i­ty. The un­der­signed ur­gent­ly sug­gest that the EMA sends a team to ob­serve this ac­tiv­i­ty and al­so to please im­ple­ment some mit­i­ga­tion to al­le­vi­ate the prob­lems of damming and sed­i­men­ta­tion of the riv­er. I look for­ward to the EMA's ur­gent feed­back on this mat­ter.

Ryan S Mo­hammed

Dr Cock van Oost­er­hout

Mark Mc­Mul­lan

Dr Joanne Ca­ble

Bet­ti­na Schelk­le

Dr Gabrielle Ar­chard

Via e-mail