When ever I read something in a newspaper which I really know about the truly frightening thing is that the article is littered with inaccuracies and the conclusions, when drawn, are normally grossly unfair. The row over the govt. 'consultation' on the 800,000 odd acres of land managed by the Forestry Commission (FC) in England is a case in point. The 'luvvies' and second rate 'celebs' have rushed to sign up for something called 'Save our Forests' when there is actually - in the government's proposal nothing to save them from. Public access to forests will continue ,even if they are sold, as it is enshrined in law, the FC has not, strangely, either been the superb woodland manager of legend and so, if these woods are sold they may well end up better managed than before and, consider, over the last thirty odd years many industries have been privatised and all now give a better service to their customers and provide a better return to their owners than when they were in public hands -so why should the sale of public forestry estate have a different outcome?
No if the 'luvvies' and 'celelbs', plus -oddly- the Archbishop of Canterbury, really want to Save our Forests then they should be campaigning for the total ban on importation of plant material into this country. Such plants -imported by so called 'nurseries' in the UK too idle to grow their own -are a enormous threat to the health of the UK's woodlands. Already tens of thousand of acres of larch trees are being felled throughout Wales and SW England because of a disease called Phytophra Ramorum brought into this country via Camellia plants imported from China via nurseries in Holland while a ill thought out reader offer by the Daily Telegraph of Acers imported from China resulted in several of the plants being found to be carrying the deadly Asian Long Horned Beetle which, if it became established, would devastate the UK's hardwoods. So come on the 'luvvies' and the 'celebs', plus all those MP's who have suddenly decided to become experts in trees, do something which will really help to Save our Forests - campaign for a ban on the importation of all plant material.
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Thursday, 3 February 2011
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- Francis Fulford
- Francis Fulford is a writer, broadcaster and television personality. He lives at Great Fulford, a beautiful country estate in Devon that has been the home of the Fulford family since around 1190.
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Good shout!. I am afraid that i lump the Forestry Comm. in with the same duff lot also occupied by the National Trust in as much as in general neither of them knows their ar**e from their elbow, indeed from what i have seen of the FC. and their local volunteer efforts the forests would be better off without them, the NT. on the other hand have succeeded in alienating most all the old families from their homes they look after (take over) and then proceed to make all the houses sterile and dead with no human character then introduce a theme park atmosphere, also have treated good friends of mine v badly indeed.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the forests go then let change happen, i have no doubt they will be run and managed better and when all is said and done the new owners cannot uproot them wholesale and ship them to wherever can they!.
Right to Roam? Right to Moan more like.
I agree, as soon as I was aware about the "sell-off" I did some research and quickly came to the same conclusion as you, the point being that either the woods were conifers planted to provide pitprops, in which case it would not be a bad thing if they were felled (not that the land under them is likely to be worth much as agricultural land, which is why the woods were planted there in the first place), or, if they were old broadleaf woods and worth felling, they would have been felled long ago.
ReplyDeleteI agree also with David above, the Nazional Trust can be crap at managing woodland. I live near a lot of Nazional Trust woodland and until recently the man in charge of it's previous experience was as a baker's roundsman and he hadn't appeared to learn anything on the job. The NT being like the Civil Service, no-one gets sacked for incompetence or let go when redundant.