Agneash residents have voiced concerns about work to create a nature reserve on land between the small village and Laxey.

The land was bought last September by the Ballannette Trust.

Villagers recently noticed large areas of field being levelled by diggers, hedgerows being removed and fencing replaced around the land along the side of the road leading to the village.

New entrance openings have been created onto the road leading to Agneash by removing sections of earth bank.

A new gate has also been added on what appears to be the end of a planned nature trail running from Agneash down towards Laxey.

An informal Agneash residents’ association has so far gathered 27 signatures for a petition, which was sent to the government, MHKs and bodies like Manx Wildlife Trust, requesting that the work be ’investigated’ and an environmental impact consultation undertaken.

The association also enlisted the use of a drone to take aerial shots of what it described as ’devastating damage to the fields [near Agneash], completely removing all vegetation and wildlife habitats’.

The local authority, Garff Commissioners, said that no planning permission had been granted, and that they had made a planning enforcement request.

The commissioners said it was standard practice to do this when public concerns were voiced, adding that they were ’particularly sensitive’ when it came to the removal of hedgerows.

However, the Ballannette Trust say that no planning permission is required.

The trust also said that the work aimed to clear up the old Laxey tip site, about 100m west of the Mines Road, which will then be opened to the public as a nature reserve.

The trust said that work began last year to de-contaminate this area and ’remove as much as practicably possible the old, buried vehicles, glass bottles, and general domestic rubbish’.

Residents had expressed concerns around social distancing and the fact work continued during lockdown, but the trust confirmed that they had undertaken a ’full dialogue’ with Department of the Environment, Food and Agriculture and the Health and Safety at Work Inspectorate, who permitted the agricultural work to go ahead.

Several Agneash residents said that there was no need for such a nature reserve and trail and questioned what ’nature’ could be seen on empty agricultural fields.

Ballannette Trust trustee Alan Clague said: ’As far as we’re concerned it’s a biosphere island, and we think there is a need for it.’

He added that there would be ’plenty of flora and fauna, it’s going to be very much like the Ballannette nature reserve in Baldrine’, which is open to the public.

The trust said that it understood a number of Agneash residents had expressed concern to Garff MHK Daphne Caine, and had contacted her offering to host a Zoom online video conference between them and Stewart Clague of the trust so that these concerns could be addressed. As of yet, no meeting has been organised.

The trust also offered residents a personal tour of the area ’so they can see for themselves the work completed to date when the island comes out of lockdown’.