Of all the places to frack -- Robin Hood’s Sherwood Forest. Really?!

INEOS, one of the world’s biggest chemical companies, is set to pounce on one of our most famous ancient forests. It’s poised to start drilling to find gas reserves, and will stop at nothing to extract profit by damaging our countryside. 

Sherwood is a public forest and legally owned by the environment minister, Andrea Leadsom. Andrea Leadsom could block INEOS’ greedy plans for Sherwood Forest. But only if she hears from enough of us first. 

Fracking already triggered two earthquakes in Blackpool in 2011. Just last year, fracking was tied to earthquakes in Oklahoma. More fracking means more earthquakes, more fossil fuels burned and even more climate change. 

Sherwood Forest is home to a fascinating eco-system, rich in folklore and a keystone of our environmental heritage. Fracking surveys are planned for just yards from a 1000 year old Oak tree, once voted ‘Britain’s favourite tree’, where legend says Robin Hood and his merry men sheltered from the Sheriff of Nottingham. 

We can’t let INEOS get its way with Sherwood Forest. This is a company that has already said it wants to dump filthy fracking wastewater into our seas. Its founder, billionaire Brexiteer Jim Ratcliffe, left the UK in 2010 to avoid paying taxes. And, in Scotland, INEOS has been involved in brutally crushing the unions at Grangemouth.

Together, we’ve changed government policy on fracking before. Almost 130,000 of us pressured the government to keep oil and gas drilling out of our national parks. Sadly Sherwood Forest isn’t in a national park, so INEOS thinks it’s fair game. Now, we just need to build on our achievement and make Andrea Leadsom expand the ban a little further to public forests.

If INEOS gets free reign to frack Sherwood, then all the big fracking companies could descend on public forests across the country. Let’s stop that from happening.