Robin Page writes, or rants, about forests, grey squirrels and conservation charities in the Mail on Sunday. As usual with Robin, everybody is doing everything wrong in a rather unspecified and vague way - but he's very cross about it.
For a more thoughtful piece, which you won't find on line, try the Sunday Express and Stuart Winter's regular Birdman column. Stuart is right to point out that our woodland wildlife is not in great shape - he knows his stuff. He likes our idea of a Forest and Wildlife Service - of which more tomorrow - and seems to think that Caroline Spelman has wildlife's interests at heart.
The Sunday Times (remember you have to pay to see this) seems to think that red squirrels care who owns the woods they live in. Since their main threat is from the non-native grey squirrel, which carries a disease to which red squirrels are particularly susceptible, it isn't immediately clear to me why red squirrels are signing up to keeping all forests in state ownership. And, of course, red squirrels have declined in numbers and range throughout the period since 1919 when the Forestry Commission was created. It would be a bit tricky to say that our squirrels are safe in FC's hands. Although if they had been a Forest and Wildlife Service rather than a state timber company then maybe things would have been better. Just maybe.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Mark - as ever in all this there's more thorough coverage in the Sunday Telegraph - and also the Observer where Andrew Rawnsley marvels at how a third order issue (and he's right, it is) can have become a defining symbol of the current Government's worst traits.
But its the Telegraph which with an RSPB style map of MPs, majorities and forests charts the full and extraordinary polictical cost of this whole disastrous exercise. I agree with Stuart Winter - and you've reported on Nagoya and the Oxford Farmers Conference - that Mrs Spelman is both impressive and comes across as having a grasp of the big issues & a real view to the future. On all except one issue - and I still ask myself how she got into it, and how she dug such a whole - forests sales. Compared to rainforest destruction, climate change and biodiversity they are a trivial waste of everyone's time. How on earth has she allowed them to become the defining issue of her time as Secretary of State and why has David Cameron put his weight behind the Government's proposals when more and more people must be wondering exactly who is behind all this and concluding its exactly the very rich, out of touch minority Cameron has to distance himself from to have any credibility with most voters.
I remain bemused - but the future is easier: this shouldn't fester, our National Forests (and Nature Reserves) do matter and we do need change - so this is the right time to look seek the future that everyone can support and I hope the Government has the guts and vision to do a real U turn and get alongside what communities and individuals have told them so clearly they want.