Residents Rake Off Greenpeace Mural on Burned Welsh Mountain
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- Greenpeace painted a 1,120-sq-m mural in Capelulo, Conwy, on a mountainside blackened by July wildfires, depicting Andy Burnham holding an oil drum alongside the words 'Our house is on fire Andy.'
- Allie Evans and Dean Ward removed the mural with rakes; the 53-year-old hairdresser said she 'can't remember having been so angry and upset all at once' and called the work 'an intrusion into local grief.'
- The July wildfire affected roughly 200 acres, was declared a major incident by North Wales Fire and Rescue Service, came within yards of destroying properties, and forced 36 homes to evacuate.
- Ward told Greenpeace online he took 'great pleasure' in removing the work and challenged the group's 'leave no trace' ethos, while Evans warned the hillside would otherwise be 'trashed' by visitors coming to see it.
- Janet Finch-Saunders, the Bangor Conwy Môn Senedd member, accused Greenpeace of 'environmental vandalism,' saying burnt hillsides should not be used 'as a canvas for political protest.'
- Greenpeace UK co-executive director Areeba Hamid said the water-based paint was safe for soil and applied only to an area where fire had already stripped living vegetation, framing the 'dab of paint' as trivial versus 'extreme weather driven by fossil fuels.'
- Evans said some paint was 'baked' onto rocks and could not be fully removed, leaving visible stripes on the site even after the raking.
Why it matters: The episode crystallises a tactical clash inside the climate movement: activists using dramatic, place-based visuals to pressure politicians are colliding with communities already traumatised by the very disasters the visuals reference. For Greenpeace, the optics now include residents publicly scrubbing their message off a disaster site — undermining the campaign while validating the broader fossil-fuel critique it tried to make.
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