Re: [Adastra] Tree planting

[Patrick Roper]

I think there are now many signs that the biodiversity era (i.e. the last 30
years or so) may be fading and being replaced by strategies (that often seem
to give a low profile to wildlife) for carbon capture and for dealing with
problems that may arise from climate change.

 

The Forestry Commission has, as already discussed, become excited about
planting trees everywhere including many exotics.  It resembles the frame of
mind they were in after World War II when they planted all those conifers,
often replacing ancient woodland.  It is, perhaps, their job to see trees as
a crop with a large national organisation looking after them and telling us
all what to do.  The Woodland Trust too, backed by the Forestry Commission,
is buying up agricultural land (for example in Hertfordshire for its
Heartwood Forest project) where it intends to plant a million trees, though
wildlife conservation still seems to be fairly high on their agenda.  Where
are all those million trees coming from I wonder?  I can almost hear the
Government pat on the back.

 

I expect too that large private landowners will also benefit from the
emerging strategy with grants available for planting Forestry Commission
recommended trees, often non-native.

 

Planting trees, of course, means raising trees in tree nurseries which
provides, not unworthily, rural employment.  This simply does not happen if
fields are allowed to turn into woods (as they do quite quickly) through
natural regeneration.  I remember being told at the Liverpool Garden
Festival many years ago that the huge number of tree whips planted on site
had been a major boost to the nursery trade which, at that time, had its own
minister.  Tree planting on a large scale is, I believe, an economic and
political activity and not much to do with conservation.

 

When the Forestry Commission really got its teeth into tree planting in the
mid-20th C, too few people saw the dangers to wildlife until it was too
late.  I feel the wheel may have come full circle with biodiversity out and
plantation psychology "for the common good" in and I am just wondering what,
if anything, we should all be doing about it.

 

Patrick Roper