Support the Woodland Trust

"The enemies of wood", Roger Deakin wrote in Wildwood "are always the enemies of humanity." I've been thinking of Deakin a lot since news surfaced of the coalition's plan to sell all of the Forestry Commission's English land. What would Deakin, that planter of pips, that weaver of ash, have made of this grand arboreal auction? And I've been thinking, too, of something WH Auden once wrote: "A culture is no better than its woods".

Laura Barton in The Guardian (5/1/2011).

Unless you have been living inside a bubble, you cannot have failed to notice increasing press being given to the conservative led government's plan to sell off the Forestry Commission's woodlands, Forests, and plantation forests. The English Public Forest Estate (PFE) covers some 258,000 ha, the largest land holding owned by the state and represents 18% of all woodland in England.

In 1997 the Labour party manifesto said that it favoured "a moratorium on large state sales of Forestry Commission land" and after the election, the Forestry Commission's budget was increased to reduce the need to sell land.
By December 2009 it set out how alternative sources of income might be generated from the PFE. Though indicating a move away from using the estate to grow timber it did not include proposals to sell off land.

A study of the PFE was carried out with a working group of academics, professionals and civil servants, and their final report was presented in May 2010, but was never published due to a change of government.

The evidence collected, as summarised in a House of Commons information note, is interesting reading, and I hope it is being read by those who are now proposing "to fundamentally reform the public forestry estate".

I say hope because as yet all we have are alarming headlines, few facts and seemingly, a lot of misunderstanding, but, from Labour to 'the greenest government ever' there seems to have been a massive shift. What we do know is that Caroline Spelman MP has said that this is not a "fire sale by a cash-strapped state" of the PFE "but the start of a new approach to making their protection more local and less central". James Paice MP, in evidence to the House of Lords is quoted as saying that "we have absolutely no intention of reducing any of the protections that exist".

Quite correctly though, many NGOS (Non Governmental Organisations) have expressed concerns, chief amongst these being The Woodland Trust,the countries leading woodland conservation charity.

They agree that not all of the existing PFE needs to be held in public ownership, especially those sites whose purpose is primarily the production of timber and which provide few benefits to the public, but;

"Future sell offs create four major uncertainties: the restoration of planted ancient woodland sites (PAWS); the lack of guarantees that income from disposals will be used to support current forestry and woodland priorities such as woodland creation; the practical difficulties of ensuring that all existing public access to the current estate is maintained and the ability of current protection mechanisms to safeguard the public value of woods to be sold."

Top of the Woodland Trust's list is the restoration of ancient woods and they recently requested from Jim Paice MP that the sell off by stealth of PAWS (that the Forestry Commission is officially committed to restoring) be halted at least until after the public consultation. They got the sales halted. Well done!

Now, the main purpose of this blog is to support The Woodland Trust and I urge you to sign the petition they have at the following link http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/en/campaigning/save-ancient-forests/Pages/fc-disposals-act-now.aspx.

Said petition is the third to appear; and, personally speaking, is the one I have been waiting for. As soon as the headlines of sales of the PFE appeared, the press went into gear and as Johann Hari in The Independent (7/1/2011) notes "The fightback will be ferocious", and that "it unites people from the Tory shires with amazing left-wing activist groups like 38 Degrees".

38 Degrees have had a petition up and running for quite a while now but, speaking personally, I found it quite woolly with little understanding of either the issues or of the vagaries of the land lumped together as the PFE, and decided against signing. Thats just my opinion.

'SAVE OUR FORESTS' screamed the headline in The Sunday Telegraph (23/1/2011) as another campaign, SAVE ENGLAND'S FORESTS is launched, with a letter published in said paper signed by almost 100 dignitaries. In it they ask that:

"The government should remove the three ill-conceived clauses from the Pubic Bodies Bill and suspend any significant sales, until the public has been fully consulted".

The clauses they mention in the Public Bodies Bill 2010 are currently being debated in parliament. Though government can sell off up to 15% of the PFE, to sell the remaining 85% they need to change the law, hence these clauses allowing them to do so.

A better petition, but still I wanted to see what those such as The Woodland Trust were going to do. Spending most of my time in the woods and having no computer or TV at home (has it been on TV?) I am often behind what is going on. But ... here it is at last, The Woodland Trust's campaign, SAVE ENGLAND'S ANCIENT FORESTS, prioritising those woods of ancient origin and of Plantations on Ancient Woodland Sites (PAWS), that is, ancient woodland currently clothed in conifers,.

They understand through their lobbying and face-to-face talks, that change is coming so have highlighted these sites for their campaign. Our irreplaceable woods of ancient origin are worth any number of plantations and that is where the impetus of their campaigning is and where, personally, i think greatest protection should be afforded. Sign all three petitions, by all means, but this is the one with the expertise behind it and, probably, the one with the most influence, though I reckon Rachel Johnson of SAVE ENGLAND'S FORESTS is bending the ear of her brother Boris. Good luck!

Well done Woodland Trust. As a footnote though, has anyone heard much about government plans to sell off our National Nature Reserves? This is almost more worrying, literally the crown jewels of British nature being sold off. But it's very quiet on this front.

Notes

a) Any quotes are from The Forestry Commission and the sale of public forests in England (House of Commons Library) last updated 6/1/2011, or from the newspapers listed.

b) Any political views inferred from this article are purely those of the author.