Treebeard, Skinbark and Leaflock have taken a leaf out of Swampy’s Little Book of Protests and are preparing to march on London town in support of our culture, nay, our civilisation, not to mention our woodland fairies.

The tree huggers are out in force, pouring arboreal prose over every left of centre publication they can find. Where will Swampy perch in future should the genocidal Con-Dems get their way and flog off the Forestry Commission?

Articles are illustrated with pictures of every ancient bole, every diseased elm, every rancid oak they can muster. Visions are conjured up of the King’s forest in Suffolk – N-ooooo! – razed to the ground by heartless developers. We speak of children spellbound watching a ladybird crawl from the crisp flayed bark of a winter Oak, of the wood nymphs, goblins and sprites, of leafy glades where young lovers stroll….

Nobody even mentions the acres of Sitka Spruce that blight the hillsides of Wales and Scotland, planted in response to the tax shelters created by the ever generous Treasury.

Take a few acres of barren hillside, plant the obliging Sitka in regimented lines to disguise the natural fall of the land, allow your friends to arrive with their twelve bores and shoot dear little Bambi and Thumper as they scamper in the shade, even encourage the Hooray Henry’s to arrive and curse and scream as they splatter each other with toxic paint, and Voila! You have a tax vehicle as efficient as any foreign haven, free of inheritance tax, and with no income tax on the profits you garner from either your mate’s blood thirst or flogging off the trees to be chipped into slivers to light those pesky cigarettes….

The spectacle of bleeding heart liberals waxing lyrical in favour of government ownership of the means to light a fag is almost as good as watching them trample over women’s rights to integrity of body in favour of their hero Assange’s rights to diss the American government.

As for destroying our culture, Huh? Cutting down trees IS our culture – we have been doing it since the Bronze Age when we figured we would rather eat than gaze at the woodland nymphs. When marauding fans of the eating culture arrived from abroad to share our wheat, we couldn’t get the remaining trees down fast enough to build boats and drive them off.

Even in modern times we chop them up to feed the ‘green’ wood-burners so beloved of Period House magazine – a hint tree huggers, you get no heat out of the Spruce, that fire you are cosied up to in your hand knitted Peruvian socks is blazing away courtesy of a tax avoider chopping down his ash and oak trees…

The low fat venison you buy in Waitrose is there, neatly wrapped in toxic cling film and unrecyclable foam platter precisely because the Forestry Commission took filthy lucre to let a group of bankers in to blast Bambi from his grazing spot.

Where do you think the Christmas Tree you lugged home from Bluewater came from, the one your children gazed on in wonder as they ripped the paper off this years version of the X-box?

It’s no good getting all excited about our modern culture whereby the ‘poor’ jump in their brand new Volkswagen Golf, turn off the 37” plasma screen, and hire a bicycle in Centre Parks to wander through the Spruce for a few hours before retiring to the lakeside bar and getting plastered.

But they don’t want you to look at the reality; they would rather drown you in poetic prose:

But it is not the enormity of it we should be looking at, not the numbers or the acreage – rather, it is the specifics, the places, the people, the species under threat: the woods where you walk your dog, or where you take your children to see the bluebells in spring; the streams where you played in your youth, the trees you climbed, the dens you made. It is the foresters who work in these woods. It is the hornbeam, the field mouse, the foxglove, the pearl-bordered fritillary, one of the many butterflies under threat. It is the call of the nightingale, and the cuckoo, the hawfinch, tree pipit and the lark. It is the smell of wet earth and leaf mould; it is the sound of the mistle thrush, the sun-dappled ferns, and the scent of wild garlic. It is what has lain at the heart of English culture for centuries.

Less than 12% of Britain has any woodland, we are not – or at least we haven’t been since the Bronze Age – a ‘woodland nation’. We are at the northern tip of the hardwood growing area, at the southern tip of the soft wood growing area – not the most viable place to make tree growing our main aim in life. The biggest worry of the tree huggers is that the land could be sold off to international companies seeking to chip the wood to – actually, to make Bio Fuel…you know the stuff the tree huggers thoroughly approve of.

‘Friends of the Earth’ is positively beside itself, there they were campaigning that chopping down trees in Africa was going to starve the wide-eyed Alesha who is just waiting for our £2 a week to save her fetching the water, and the energy companies have nipped in behind their backs and put in a bid for the English trees.

Soon there won’t be any wood left to fasten your protester’s placard to…..

Shall we just remind ourselves why we have a forestry commission in the first place?

The Forestry Commission was created in 1919, after the First World War, during a time when forest cover in Britain was at it’s lowest. Much of Britain had been deforested in order to fuel the war effort. The Commission was created in reaction to the fact that Britain and Ireland, at the time, were the least forested countries in Europe and were almost solely dependent on timber imports for their wood supply (Mackay, 1994). The goal of the Forestry Commission was to establish strategic wood reserves in order to decrease reliance on imports in case of another war.

Not so you could count the pretty Ladybirds…

Barry Houghton
January 19, 2011 at 13:55

Trees grow, trees are cut down, trees are planted, etc, it’s been happening
since man has been around. No problem there whether its commercial or publicly
owned, we need wood. The commercial concerns however do not say much about is
the issue of public access. The government promises (now there’s something to
be worried about!) that public access rights will be retained. Public access
rights fall very short of the public access allowed at most FC sites at
present and are normally very basic. At present at most Forestry Commission
sites, there is good access and people are free to roam more or less anywhere.
Some woods have already been sold off such as at Riggs Wood in the Lakes, and
it has been reported that the carparks there have been shut off and access
banned. New owners of future FC areas sold off will probably only allow access
on pre existing rights of way and this will in most cases be just for walkers,
not for horses, bikes etc. General use as a recreation facility will be
denied, despite the “promises”. With our massive population in such a tiny
island we need as much recreation space as possible and the way to protect
that is to leave it in the hands of the FC.

Just a thought, tree huggers and commerce could live together, but that
might mean making sensible consessions and why spoil a good fight. Personally
I just want the right for myself and others to wander freely through the
woods!

John of Groats
January 15, 2011 at 20:21

The issues here are:
Who owns the forests & woodlands?
Why are
they being sold?

The nation own the public forest estate, managed by the Forestry
Commission. The nation have been investing in this estate for many years. It
currently costs each person in England 30 pence a year to fund the FC. The
rewards for this investment are social, economic and envrionmental.

Social as in visiting and enjoying forests and woodland for a variety of
activities.

Economic as the FC supports the timber industry with timber production
forecasts, allowing the industry to plan for investment, supplies of timber,
outputs to their customers. They also dampen out severe fluctuations in price
& supply, thereby stabilising the homegrown timber market and hence
avoiding boom and bust in woodland and forest businesses. This in turn keeps
jobs in rural areas and helps with beneficial economics to all involved in
forest businesses and those that rely on them further down the line.

Environmental as in protecting and enhancing the bio-diversity resource
upon which we all depend for life, not to mention the legally binding
obligations to various international agreements eg, UN, EU and Kyoto.

The proposals to sell the public forest estate are supposedly, if the
government are to be believed, to pay back the debt the banking and financial
industry caused. The money raised from selling the FC and its forests would
pay about a mornings interest payments on the UK debt. Meanwhile the banking
industry proposes to pay billions in wages and bonuses to the very people who
lost the money in the first place.

Conclusion: The UK population is rewarding the banking sector for failure,
by selling the nation’s assets to the already rich, powerful, untruthful and
treacherous sectors of our society, the enemy within.

Note on woodland and forest management: Things made of wood have to come
from trees and that means cutting them down and allowing them to regrow, as in
the case of coppicing of broadleaves; and/or planting new baby trees too and
providing the skills and resources, forward planning and commitment, over the
long term to achieve this. Public sector=long term planning and commitment:
Private sector=short term profits for shareholders and damn the long term
consequences. Seen in in the railways where the private sector bled the
infrastructure dry, failed to reinvest and then having taken all the money,
went back to the public sector saying they were skint. Public money now
maintains the rail infrastructure, private sector couldn’t manage that. Says
it all really.

Note on the private sector: The FC owns and manages 18% of the forested
area of Britain. Out of this 18% comes 60% of the homegrown timber to the
timber industry and 44% of all public woodland access. The private sector do
not have a good record of timber production ie managing their woods, and
generally discourage or prevent public access. Yes there are a few good
private woodland owners but the majority just use them for private shooting
parties at £20,000 per person per year or alternatively use them for tax
avoidance.

The private sector if allowed to take control of the remaining 18% will
mess things up, avoid paying their tax, chuck you out, and then come cap in
hand for grants from you the taxpayer while they plead poverty when choking on
their champagne and caviar.

Afterthought: Since when have multi-millionaire politicians put your
interests ahead of theirs????

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/13/english-forests-lost-tax-revenues

http://saveourforests.co.uk/

Sill January 15, 2011 at 21:30

The issues here are:
Who owns the forests & woodlands?
Why are
they being sold?

Yes, and I would add to that: What do our forests mean to us?

If woodland is regarded as no more than a balance sheet (or indeed an
enviromental ‘trophy’) – affordable or not – then I’m afraid we’ve already
lost more than we know.

And, speculatively, doesn’t an instinctive sense of meaning mobilise
people better than statistics?

Rightwinggit January 7, 2011 at 17:44

“Anna sees a tree and thinks: Fuel, logistics and commerce. She pisses on
all the rest. Pushes it down her own throat.

FoE person sees a tree and thinks: Beauty, meaning and continuity. He
pisses on all the rest. Pushes it down his own throat.

FoE spits bile at Anna, and Anna spits bile at FoE. Perfect symmetry.
Schizophrenic.”

And I see board feet of richly figured timber, in the workshop I designed
and built myself….dribble…

Ladybird January 7, 2011 at 18:28

Which makes my point, not Anna’s: timber is a product of Beauty AND
Function, Poetry and Form. They each have their place; but only so long as
we cultivate in equal measure to cut.

Sounds a great workshop.

The FoE’s have it wrong. But so does Anna.

I have a workshop perhaps not disimilar to yours. And quite unashamedly I
relate to timber both emotionally and functionally. As I do trees.

The FoEs claim a monopoly on the argument of woodland as
heritage/culture, just as Anna does on its commerce.

The two parties should talk rather than polarise themselves into
reactionary ‘camps’.

Cultures have in the past perished because of their failure to adapt
practices to a new reality. Both the Greens, and it appears Anna, show no
propensity to adapt, or even to consider their fallability.

They just retreat into characatures of their own making.

St Paul January 7, 2011 at 16:48

If you concentrate on the £ signs, the commercial value of these woodlands
lies in the commissions to the spivs, who broker their acquisition and
disposal and try to churn the market.

Engineer January 7, 2011 at 14:14

Forestry is like farming in that it’s about producing a crop. Very slowly.
All the conifer plantations were about growing pit-props; now the trees are
mature, we have all the pit-props we need, but no pits. So we sell the trees
for what we can get for them (not much) and turn them into newsprint and
chipboard instead.

The new owners of forests will also want their crop, but forestry is a long
game. Many will plant broadleaves instead – a product more likely to be in
demand in 150 years time. And if their growing forests produce a surplus of
Bambis in the meantime, so much the better – Bambi pie is better for you than
most farm-reared meats, and provided a healthy population remains, what’s the
problem? We’ve been eating wild foods since long before tree-huggers were
invented.

There are lots of good things that can be done to manage woodland well –
coppicing, selective felling, careful replanting. The old-established landed
estates have been doing that for generations, and there’s no reason to think
that their knowledge and experience will be ignored.

Strange how some people can be so passionately wrong-headed. Saving trees
might seem a good idea, but craftsmen use timber in many creative and
‘sustainable’ ways. We need lots more trees, but we need to cut them when
they’re mature.

SadButMadLad January 7, 2011 at 13:41

All the tree huggers seem to have forgetton that there is a thing called
planning permission.

The trees can’t be chopped down to make space for new houses which is one
way of making a profit from land. So the only other way is to make use of the
trees in some way. You could chop all the trees down and sell the wood but
then what does the land owner do then. They can’t sell the land as a forest as
it doesn’t have any trees on it and they can’t sell the land for developing as
it will never get planning permission. They could use it for some kind of
sport or event but they are just as likely to want the trees there to make the
sport or event better.

In any case, a forest needs to managed and that includes chopping down old
trees to make way for new trees.

A particular rant of mine is the loads of huge trees blocking light etc
which have tree preservation orders on because they are “old ancient trees
that are a sign of our history”. When they were planted the trees were not
expected to grow big and old. They would have been managed to ensure that
light and view was maintained. In any case new trees can be planted to replace
the old chopped down ones. In actual fact young trees are better than old
trees at sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere – so suck on that eco-fascists.

Gildas the Monk
January 7, 2011 at 12:52

I can’t see the wood for the trees!

Pericles January 7, 2011 at 12:34

’Morning.  But don’t call me ‘Toncrescent’ … raising (empty) glass to
Leslie Nielsen.

ΠΞ

Pericles January 7, 2011 at 12:25

I think you’re rather missing the point, Ben and Richard B.

The Raccoon Arms is unlike your local pub — perhaps once gloriously named
‘The Australian Arms’ (complete with a beautifully rendered version of the
achievement on its sign-board) but now prosaically called
‘Diggers’ :  it has not been re-named ‘RatWashers’ (notice
the pointless, web-like crasis) ;  lacks those ghastly, forever
flashing slot machines, the spor’ on the 48-inch proculvisor (one in each bar
naturally).

It does, on the other paw, have harmless little games — much more like the
dominoes, shove-halfpenny &c. that used to be seen in English pubs —
carefully and subtly scattered about by the considerate landlady (or, as she
self-deprecating calls herself, barmaid), Mme. Ratonne Laveuse.

What you failed to see was the link between ‘raised’ in the one sentence
and ‘spellbound’ in the following ;  a rather easier game (no pun
intended) of a different type is ‘dear little Bambi’ :  these
diversions resemble that programme on the Home Service in which a collection
of tenuous links leads to the identification of some location in Chipping
Sodbury.

(Sometimes a tournament breaks out :  see the entry by Caedmon’s
Cat.)

ΠΞ

Anna
Raccoon January 7, 2011 at 12:31

Mornington Crescent…….

lenko
January 7, 2011 at 12:35

Damn! I was just going to go there.

Ladybird,
Ladybird January 7, 2011 at 12:25

Anna sees a tree and thinks: Fuel, logistics and commerce. She pisses on
all the rest. Pushes it down her own throat.

FoE person sees a tree and thinks: Beauty, meaning and continuity. He
pisses on all the rest. Pushes it down his own throat.

FoE spits bile at Anna, and Anna spits bile at FoE. Perfect symmetry.
Schizophrenic.

It’s a tree. Thats all.

Demetrius January
7, 2011 at 12:14

What was Spike Milligan’s once famous song, “I talked to the trees, that’s
why they took me away!”?

Richard B January
7, 2011 at 11:49

Ben beat me to it. ‘Razed’, as in ‘razor’.

Caedmon’s
Cat January 7, 2011 at 10:57

‘Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam wood to high
Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him’ – or at least, that’s what the Bard
says. Chesterton talks about the time when fishes flew and forests walked. Do
they take root 66? As for me – I’m stumped as to why these faux-romantics get
so excited about it all; it’s my beleaf that they’re all barking mad..

Anna
Raccoon January 7, 2011 at 11:47

“they’re all barking mad”

Nice, clever…….

Ben January 7, 2011 at 10:54

Didn’t you mean ‘razed to the ground’?

Anna
Raccoon January 7, 2011 at 11:45

Yes, I did – Thank-you!

backwoodsman
January 7, 2011 at 14:34

Point of order, you don’t shoot Bambi with a twelve bore. You will need
a minimum .243 calibre rifle before the police will put Roe deer on your
certificate. Further point of order, you wouldn’t invite your friends
along to shoot in a Sitka plantation, there is stuff all in them.
The
Forestry Commission manages to blue about a billion pounds of tax payers
money per annum. They are pretty hopeless at everything they touch,
including forestry, which is why they have been trying over recent years ,
to re-invent themselves as managing a leisure asset, so they can keep
taking tax payers money.
Any objection to selling off forestry
commission land could be overcome by a) saying it can only be felled &
replanted & b) saying the resultant replanting must be a mimum of 30%
(or whatever) of hardwoods.