UK Will Close 3 Leading Wildlife Research Centers To Save Money

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The decision to close three leading wildlife research centres as a cost-cutting exercise has been confirmed, amid angry protests from environmentalists. The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) said it was going ahead with the decision to scrap the centres in Monk's Wood, Cambridgeshire, Winfrith in Dorset and Banchory near Aberdeen. A large number of scientists will be made redundant.

The centres, all part of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), are being closed in a plan to slim the organisation down and save money. The cost-cutting plan itself will cost £43m, and has attracted a huge weight of opposition from the life sciences community in the past few weeks.

Many organisations and research bodies see the work the centres do as uniquely valuable, in areas such as detecting the effects of climate change on the British countryside. More than a thousand hostile responses were received in the consultation exercise about the proposals, with Tories and Liberal Democrats coming together in protest.

Yesterday the NERC brushed all this aside after its 18-strong council confirmed the original closure plan in its main outline. The present nine CEH sites will be reduced to four, with Monk's Wood, Winfrith and Banchory to be closed. Staff from them who are not sacked will have to move to other sites including Wallingford in Oxfordshire, and Edinburgh.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article351130.ece