A farmer who was jailed for bulldozing a riverside beauty spot to protect a village from flooding has been sent back to prison after failing to overturn his sentence. John Price, 68, was caged for 12 months after he illegally used an 18-tonne digger to dredge a one mile section of the River Lugg near Leominster, Herefordshire.
A judge told him he had committed "ecological vandalism on an industrial scale" along a stretch of one of Britain's most important salmon rivers.
The Environment Agency said the damage was one of the worst cases of riverside destruction it had ever seen, which led to a "devastating" effect on local wildlife. Mr Price had claimed he acted in December 2020 to protect locals in the nearby hamlet whose homes had been devastated by previous floods.
