Anger over plans for windfarm on historic Owain Glyndwr battlefield
Campaigners objecting to a massive windfarm on a mountain where Welsh prince Owain Glyndwr staged a decisive battle will today stage a peaceful protest.
More than 100 turbines, each 140m high, could go up on Mynydd Hyddgen.
Developers Airtricity won an Assembly tender for the wind farm, at Nant-y-Moch in the Pumlumon hills above Machynlleth, straddling Powys and Ceredigion.
They insist the site will safeguard energy supplies.
The site - along with others at Clocaenog Forest, Denbighshire, and Carno and Newtown - was earmarked to achieve renewable energy targets for 2010 and 2020.
The area includes historic Mynydd Hyddgen, where Owain Glyndwr's 500 men beat a much larger army of English settlers from Pembrokeshire and settlers of Flemish descent, encouraged by King Henry I of England.
The Wildland Network say Nant-y-Moch's peat bogs should be left as a bulwark against climate change, rather than populated with turbines, claiming wildlife and scenery concerns are being brushed aside in the rush for renewable energy.
CMS (the Cambrian Mountains Society), which unsuccessfully resisted the development of Cefn Croes, Wales' largest on-shore wind farm, estimated 30,000 tonnes of concrete was used there, emitting 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, while 300 articulated lorry loads arrived on site. The new generation of 140m turbines need foundations the size of half a football pitch.
Today CMS is organising a peaceful protest against the plans.
Organiser Ann West of Cregrina, Powys, said: "This is a massive application on part of the battlefield of Hyddgen where Owain Glyndr was outnumbered 10-to-one. "We need as many people as possible to come and share our outrage at the destruction of this wonderful part of the Cambrian Mountains."
Airtricity's Ross Easton said: "Nant-y-Moch is exactly the kind of project needed if those legal targets are to be met and supplies of energy are to be safeguarded."