BirdLife Malta officials insisted today that the government’s plans to build a new road at Ghadira should be stopped until the government produced scientific evidence to back its claims that the project was needed in order to safeguard the beach.

The government has proposed building a new road further inland from the existing one, which will be removed. Transport Minister Austin Gatt has insisted the new road is needed to protect the beach and stop erosion.

Tolga Temuge, BirdLife executive director, accused the government of ‘scaremongering’ and said that building a new road further inland did not automatically mean that the beach would grow. Indeed, what could happen was that it would retreat inward and ruin the nature reserve.

Andre Raine, conservation manager, said it was possible that the existing Ghadira Road was serving as a form of coastal defence protecting the ecologically important habitat of Ghadira, which was below sea level.

“Transport Minister Austin Gatt is proposing the removal of the road without undertaking any research as to what impact this would have on coastal processes and whether negative effects such as inundation of these key areas could be a consequence, particularly in stormy conditions.”

The officials said they had objected to a former proposal by then minister Jesmond Mugliett because the project involved elevating the existing road and cutting through part of the nature reserve and destroying hundreds of trees at the Foresta 2000 project site.

They said that the only thing that was common between Dr Gatt’s latest proposal and that by Mr Mugliett was that it would create a breach in front of the SeaBank Hotel.

They urged the Prime Minister, whose ministerial portfolio included the environment, to intervene in the issue.