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Sleeping snakes and lizards disrupt work on Tesla’s Berlin gigafactory

Environmental groups have won an interim injunction forcing Tesla to stop felling trees for its electric vehicle gigafactory under construction at Grünheide, south of Berlin.

The move comes after Tesla received a permit last week to clear 83 extra hectares of pine forest at the site to make way for product storage and a waste water conduit, newspaper Deutsche Welle reports.

The groups fear for hibernating European indigenous smooth snakes and Sand Lizards.

They applied for the emergency injunction from the Administrative Court in Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, citing German conservation law.

According to the newspaper, the court will hear testimony from Tesla, the state of Brandenburg and environmentalists to determine what happens next.

The environmental groups are Brandenburg’s Green League (Grüne Liga) and the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU).

The plant is scheduled to start producing cars in July 2021.

Image: Aerial view in October 2020 of the Tesla gigafactory under construction at Grünheide, south of Berlin (Michael Wolf, Penig/CC BY-SA 3.0) 

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Comments

  1. Shame that a company like Tesla making so called eco friendly electric vehicles, needed to be taken to court over this….maybe the Looming Spectre of Electric cars and all the Environmental pollution from discarded batteries is starting to show its ugly head….

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