IMAGINE a developer wanting to build a new housing estate next to York Minster - in Dean’s Park, say, or Duncombe Place. There would be outrage, right? Well, building a new estate next to Askham Bog would, in its way, be just as much of a desecration. And before you get on your high horse and accuse us of exaggerating - it wasn’t us who said that. It was Sir David Attenborough.

Sir David was on a visit to the bog in 2016 to mark the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s 70th birthday. When told there had been talk of building a housing estate nearby, he could scarcely hide his dismay.

“If someone was proposing to put a building site next to York Minster there would be an outcry,” he said. “For naturalists, that’s what this site is like. This is a treasure that is irreplaceable.”

Irreplaceable is exactly the word. Askham Bog is a unique landscape formed over thousands of years by both natural processes and human intervention. Once gone, we would never be able to restore it.

The bog formed thousands of years ago in a hollow left behind by retreating glaciers. It has been used as a source of peat for fuel since Roman times, resulting in an extraordinary mosaic of habitats, including peat bog, ponds, and drainage ditches. It contains more than 300 plants species as well as a wealth of insects, birds and small mammals.

Despite earlier talk of building nearby, land next to the bog was not marked for housing in the draft local plan. But now developer Barwood Strategic Land LLP has applied for outline permission to build up to 516 houses at Moor Lane, which borders the bog.

The company claims the “sustainable” development will not harm the bog - and will in fact improve it. Nonsense, says the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust: the very future of the bog would be put at risk from disturbance to the water table, and loss of a green corridor for wildlife.

We’re with Sir David and the wildlife trust on this one. We understand the need in York for decent housing. But this is not the place for it. Hands off Askham Bog, we say - and the land near it on which its future depends.