Frankfurt airport: we will defend every tree and every hut

Lord Soley and his chums at BAA are fond of saying that if we don't expand Heathrow everyone will just fly from Frankfurt or Schipol. Not without a fight they won't. Frankfurt is the second largest airport in Europe; Fraport (who own the airport) and the German government are trying to build a new runway to massively increase capacity.

The only problem is the 250,000 m2 of protected forest that cheekily grew where they want to plonk the tarmac. For seven months activists have been squatting the forest, building tree platforms and floating rafts to resist attempts to chop down the forest. The protestors have vowed to defend every tree and every hut. Some of them have a history of anti-expansion protests: twenty five years ago there was a massive site battle over the second runway. Then the German Government swore there wouldn't be any more runways. Where have we heard that before?

January 2009 is bringing threat of eviction - and they need all the help they can get. If you're kicking about and fancy building some metaphorical bridges, why not head over? There's more background info and directions to the camp on their website (in english), and a whole bunch of pretty photos as well. Bus tickets to Frankfurt via Eurolines are about 50 quid.