Steward Community Woodland residents are marching to Dartmoor National Park’s headquarters to deliver a petition of 5,500 signatures, on Monday April 3.
With colourful banners, costumes and a life-sized willow sculpture deer, they’ll be calling on the national park authorities to allow them to continue living at their woodland home in Moretonhampstead.
A spokesman for the community said: ‘Although there’s a serious message to the procession, there’ll be a carnival atmosphere with children and families creating a sense of celebration, community and solidarity. This is, after all, what we wish to see more of in this world.
‘There’ll be placards, banners, lots of colour, costumes, storytelling, and a life-sized willow sculpture of a leaping deer being carried, tying in with our theme of ’taking the woods to the park’.
The low-impact living project was refused permanent planning permission by a planning inspector in 2016. Residents - 12 adults, five children and five teenagers - have been given until December to dismantle their low impact homes and move off site.
The spokesman added: ‘Despite massive support, particularly from within the local community, the urgent need to find solutions to the huge environmental crisis we face; and living at Steward Wood for 17 years with two previous periods of planning permission, we’ve been told we have to go by the end of the year.’