THE breathtaking hypocrisy of the windfarm industry is now laid bare for all to see.

The developers who want to despoil the area around Roughtor, one of Cornwall's most ecologically and archaeologically sensitive sites, show their concern for the environment by first planning to dig up a rare wildlife-rich peat bog and pour concrete into it for tunnels and foundations. They then propose to cut down thousands of trees at the site because they attract hundreds of thousands of starlings and other species on their migrations.

Anyone who has stood in awe watching the magnificent spectacle of these great flocks of birds swooping over the edge of Bodmin Moor will be speechless at such blatant disregard for the ecology of the area.

Community Windfarms Ltd hopes to allay criticism that birds will be killed and maimed by the turbines, which would, when built, be higher than Roughtor itself. Yet only last week a West Country school turned off its single, small turbine because the pupils were upset at the number of dead birds regularly found underneath it. If that is the result of one tiny turbine, it doesn't take a genius to work out the potential devastation caused by an entire wind factory positioned directly in the path of migrating flocks.

There are deep concerns about how planning permission was granted for this ecological vandalism. Local people were shocked when permission was passed without proper discussion and presentation of facts that opposed the project. The result was that nearly everyone believes the decision was taken before the members of the committee even entered the room. It is widely believed that the reason this was passed despite the overwhelming objections against it was because the committee was largely from the west of the county, and didn't really care as long as the turbines were not on their patch. This is an alarming situation, if true. It means that since the creation of a unitary authority local people have little or no say in what happens in their area, and democracy has become a sham.

Surely the people of Cornwall cannot tolerate such a situation. Can they stand by and allow an act of such desecration to take place in one of the last great wildernesses left? Roughtor, as a correspondent pointed out in a recent letter, is one of the spiritual heartlands of Cornwall, with its prehistoric stone circles, settlements and ruins of an ancient chapel to St Michael on its summit, all set in a landscape that has changed little in thousands of years. It is a place of profound tranquillity and inspiration for locals and visitors alike, which could soon, unless there is some sort of modern Cornish rebellion, become little more than a viewing platform for one of the county's biggest and most prominent industrial installations.

We have until July 22 to make our views known.

Paul Broadhurst

North Cornwall