"Giving birth to a village" (Argus, July 3) was complete greenwash. In reality, the smashing up of the Ashenground Wood/Catts Wood Site of Nature Conservation Importance (SNCI) to build the exclusive Bolnore Village housing development is one of the biggest disasters for nature in Sussex in the past 30 years.

It is a disaster, too, for poorer people in Sussex, for the barmy prices of this posh development will further distort the housing market and social mix of mid-Sussex, making it impossible for poorer people to gain housing in their own area.

I have visited and recorded the wildlife of these woods for five years and stood in wonder at the magnificence of this ancient place.

The great sheets of dazzling bluebells and wild daffodils are truly the most beautiful thing I have seen. They will soon be lost to these houses. The developers' cosmetic mitigation measures will not save the Purple Emperor butterfly colony, upon which new housing will encroach. And the glow worms, water shrews, dormice, yellow-necked mice and other special creatures of this wonderful patchwork of oak and heathy birchwoods, meadows and streams will all be lost.

Ashenground Wood may have stood for 10,000 years since the retreat of the glaciers. The fragmentation of these woods, the roads, street lights, noise, houses, domestic pets, litter, schools and sports grounds will erode the special interest of the "precious fragments" the developers leave.

The location of this housing development in this huge woodland mosaic enables the developer to economise on landscaping and raises the value of the development.

The slick advertising ("Echoes of a bygone era. Calm down. Relax. Every road to have a 20mph limit") is designed for well-off, incoming commuters who have no thought of the wonderful place they are complicit in ruining.

-Dave Bangs, secretary, Friends of Whitehawk Hill