Where's my forest gone? To the Grouse...that's where....

[2manyoranges]

Background - or skip to the video

The Grom is not an eco warrior. He is a scientist. Studying forestry. He was involved in managing woodland since he was ten. He will go into land management policy as well as insist on being out and about amongst trees. I am not an eco warrior. I am a researcher. I have been out in the natural world since I was tiny, wandering the chalk valleys and hills of Wiltshire - and more recently managed a 10 acre woodland in my spare time. It's one reason I have always mountain biked - but with a 'leave no trace' philosophy rather than 'dig it up' mentality. Digging can be good - done well it can get young people out into nature in ways that might not otherwise have happened.

My other offspring seldom is outdoors. Bedroom to kitchen to car to work and back. Like many young people she is 'very concerned about the environment' and has virtually no contact with nature. Sigh. That just doesn't work at all - she is bombarded by 'buy this' 'buy that' and that erodes any real concern for nature. But that's pretty much the norm. We may be doomed.

But as counterpoint, for upcoming generations I am working hard to try get the Natural History GCSE approved - so slow.

And then this video - essential watching. I love being in forests. So full of flora and fauna. Badgers hacking up the paths for worms. Squirrels being effing annoying. Roe deer fawns silently tiptoeing about. Fungi erupting everywhere. And the spiders...

SO WHY SO LITTLE FOREST IN HIGHLAND SCOTLAND!!!!???!!

Here's why....

 

[highlandsflyer]

It's a complex issue.

 

[2manyoranges]

It's a complex issue.

it ceertainly is.
But wouldn't it be nice to have forests where currently there are few (but increasing)?

 

[highlandsflyer]

Yes. Let's start with Hyde Park.

 

[2manyoranges]

Yes. Let's start with Hyde Park.

I am sure up for that

 

[sjcprojects]

It's the same for the vast majority of the countryside in the UK, including national parks, which of course are for the most part just farmland. I'm lucky to live on the edge of a national park, but every time I ride through it I think about what it would look like without all the sheep, shooting and related burning (sheep farming, by the way, is totally economically unviable, and only exists now due to subsidisation, so we're all paying for that environmental destruction). Most of the land is of course owned by extremely rich people who have no interest in changing the status quo.

Just to take one example, Wales does not 'naturally' look like this. This is entirely a sheep-created landscape.

 

[highlandsflyer]

it ceertainly is.
But wouldn't it be nice to have forests where currently there are few (but increasing)?

Depends on the nature of the location, and how the land is used currently. We don't need to rush in, which has been disastrous with wind.

 

[bikeworkshop]

Depends on the nature of the location, and how the land is used currently. We don't need to rush in, which has been disastrous with wind.

There's been plenty of unsuitable, destructive tree planting too.

There's all- day chainsaws in the background here at home, removing several acres of 80s tax-break plantation that is now sick,
Almost nothing lived there in the darkness anyway, now leaving a boggy mess.

It was planted over the local style of sheep farming land for which the lower Wye Valley is famous, thick walls and hedgerows, copses, many mature trees, rich in insect life, orchids, rare plants and mammals.

The recent encouragement of tree planting without first establishing uk nurseries led to the mass importation of Chalara Ash dieback disease.

Corbyn said he'd plant a billion trees.
5 Minute job, no doubt.

It's a shame there's way to many deer and sheep on the uplands. We need to pay more for food.

 

[highlandsflyer]

I used to plant 1100 plus a day. Hard work, but paid well for a young man, thankyou Terry Wogan.
A huge number of mine form part of an amenity forest area now, which I am able to ride around forty years on. They were never commercially viable, just a 'scam'.

 

[sjcprojects]

It was planted over the local style of sheep farming land for which the lower Wye Valley is famous, thick walls and hedgerows, copses, many mature trees, rich in insect life, orchids, rare plants and mammals.

How do you get mature trees in land used for sheep farming? Either the sheep have to be kept separate from the saplings, or the trees were already mature when the sheep moved in, I guess? Genuine question, I'm curious to know.

To be sure, tree-planing has to be done with care (unlike in the past, as mentioned – imported trees from Canada also probably brought midges to our shores, which I'm sure no one is thankful for), but I think there are plenty of good examples of 'rewilding' here in the UK. Unfortunately these will always be fairly small-scale without pretty radical land reform...which goes all the way back to why anyone actually 'owns' land in the first place. In the US the vast majority of National Park land is federal public land – and it should be here, too (and that's just for starters).