Sir, Catherine Robinson (Letters, June 23) misses the point of my letter (June 16).

The minor impact on the wildlife of the Trap Grounds of a road adjacent to the railway would be balanced by the positive benefits of an improved access to Aristotle Lane to schoolchildren, canal wildlife, and humans in Hayfield, Polstead and Kingston Roads.

In fact the grassland created by the road construction would benefit wildlife by creating more habitat variety on the margin of the Trap Grounds.

It would be useful to have recent evidence that the species which Ms Robinson mentions still occur abundantly within ten metres of the railway line.

Here, amongst the dangerous giant hogweed (a pollutant according to the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981), discarded iron and broken bricks, one finds the extremely frequent hawthorn/ivy communities W21/W24 (National Vegetation Classification) of abandoned derelict land.

The attitude of the parents of children at SS Philip & St James to the current access is also important.

Does the parents' association feel on the whole that the current school access is dangerous and a nursery class is desirable, or not? A legal interpretation of the Town Green legislation would be invaluable. If a Town Green is declared on the basis of dog-walking, is its use restricted to similar activities (and what are they?), or might it, as Lord Hoffman suggested, be used for all the sports and pastimes which are whole community activities?

In that the case the destruction of nature would not be limited to the margin, for on the half of this council-owned land least valuable for wildlife we might have a rugby pitch and a skateboard park?

Tim King, Oxford