Pasted below is a blog I wrote on 4 November 2009 (not 2010) but you can go back to the original to check I haven't changed a word. I am relieved to see that what I wrote then still seems pretty true well over a year later, after a couple of autumns and a general election.
The blog below highlights the likely cuts to environmental spending and changes to organisational structure that would follow a change of government and it sets out clearly how good and how not so good is the Forestry Commission.
The autumn colours this year are lovely - last weekend's winds put a lot of leaves on the ground but there are still many leaves on the trees near where I live and I'm looking forward to more weeks of greens, golds, reds and browns.
Before next autumn's colours delight us, a general election will have taken place and we will certainly see cuts in government spending and perhaps a reorganisation of government departments and agencies.
So what about the Forestry Commission if we are thinking autumn colours? Set up in 1919 to ensure a strategic reserve of pit props for the mining industry the Forestry Commission is now a non-Ministerial government department whose aims are to protect, expand and promote the sustainable management of woodland and increase its value to society and the environment.
My experience of FC staff is that they are a very enthusiastic bunch, and good on delivering on the ground, but their enthusiasm is sometimes greater for expanding and promoting the management of woodland than for delivering the wider public benefits which could come from the land under FC's management. There are many, many exceptions to that generalisation but, if anything, the wider vision of what Forestry Commission England can deliver has narrowed in recent years.
I found this description of what the Dutch Forest Service, Staats bos beheer, does very interesting. At least in words, this seems a more rounded and progressive definition for what a state forest service should do. There are real questions about whether the state has a part to play in growing commercial timber crops - since we don't have a state fishing fleet, or state farms, and we no longer need that strategic reserve of timber for the mines, isn't growing trees just a business like growing wheat, oil seed rape or potatoes?
The Dutch model seems pretty relevant to the English situation. Both are crowded countries with high population densities and have suffered great losses of biodiversity-rich habitats in recent decades. Staats bos beheer manages 250,000ha with c1000 staff and Forestry Commission England manages about 260,000ha with about 800 staff.
FCE already has a large area (c60,000ha) of non-forest land under its management (including a large heathland estate - but FCE has been a bit slow in contributing fully to the government heathland recreation targets) and is converting another large area (c50,000ha) back to restore native woodland on ancient woodland sites where conifers were planted in the past. So we are already getting on for about half of the land area being committed to wider wildlife, landscape and other public goods rather than hard-nosed traditional forestry. This is good - that's probably what a state forest service should do although the Dutch model is far clearer about the direction of travel and, I guess, the direction leads to a much closer fit between what the Forestry Commission does and what Natural England does.
Whatever comes out of the next twelve months before we see the autumn colours again, we should seek to ensure that the really special areas of land currently managed by FCE remain protected for their wildlife and landscape value. A time of financial cuts and government reorganisation is always a dangerous time for the natural world (which is why we'd like you to sign the RSPB's Letter to the Future please!) but a secure future for the wildlife that has been protected by the Forestry Commission for so many years needs to be part of that future.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Nightjar, I agree!
The Cotswold Water park sightings website
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Mark - thats really taking a lead - and noone better to say it than RSPB !
Can anyone believe the Government's plans are really going to happen ? I don't - but what we need now is vision - scarce enough in this day and age - a real way forward, not a lot of crowing over 'winning' but a bit of REAL Big Society where we all work together for a brighter future - and its great that you and your supporters can see an exciting way forward through a new Government environmental body which, with the track record of the National Forests & the NNRs could be something to be really proud of.
You and others have been critical of some aspects of the Forestry Commission - some of its true, some of its down to people's attitudes - but please don't miss one really important point: REMIT - that Government Ministers still think Fc is mainly about timber shows just how bad the problem is - thinking so out of date still hangs on, along with the perception that FC is just a simple, inefficient timber producer - that affects funding, it makes people nervous of going off into eg heathland restoration - is it part of the brief ? Who will pay.
FC needs a new remit & purpose - it should be forward looking - but most of all it needs to reflect Fc today and what it has achieved in the last 10 years. And a new public-benefit deliverer not just for our valued National Forests, but our equally valued National Nature Reserves is the answer.
Nice one Mark and your comment says everything about the way you conduct your blog as we who make comments make bloomers sometimes and you let us down gently.
redkite - thank you
petercrispin - no need to eat humble pie. If there is any obligation on the reader of this blog, which there isn't, it is to comment with passion and good ideas in an interesting way. You do that - thank you! You certainly don't have to read and remember every word that has ever appeared here. Your comments are very welcome. And you and the RSPB are not miles apart in what we think - we aren't absolutely in the same place but we are close friends I would say!
Hi Mark,
Well I just have to take back what I have said ! I am delighted to eat humble pie ! I pretty much agree with all of this and have only been involved here since January and thought I had checked all your comments on the issue; so an apology.
I think the idea of an National Nature Reserve and Forestry Link Up first class; it may lift the FC game in all those areas that we know where FC is completely neanderthal; this reform would deliver an overall integrity to the conservation of our beautiful wild places that really appeals to me; these are our modern Commons and this campaign has returned to us our NNR's before the Wildlife Alliance even fired a shot.
I still beg RSPB to turn its considerable expertise to ensuring that the upland sitka is not sacrificial lamb on the altar of this governments policy; I would so love to see the uplands replanted in a more varied fashion for disease and acidification control demands this, although harvesting works against us here. I would also urge that in the lowlands that community management groups are encouraged re coppicing, thinning etc in return for a firewood crop.
Also I hear that the unions are mounting a legal challenge to this "consultation" and feel they have a good case; so I am proud of my union membership as I say to you my heart and spirit has followed birds and birdsong since my first memories and a lifelong association with YOC and RSPB.
When I heard Jonathan Porrit speak at Forest of Dean Speech House on 4 Jan 2011 he urged us forward to defeat this lamentable Sell Off with the words "that this will prove as seismic to this government as the oil price protests to Tony Blair".
At the time I considered him fanciful; but not at all, not now, Porrits touch for the common mood is as strong as ever; this is a country where love of the oak is steeped in our ancient rights of common, that built the ships that sailed from these shores; let no government consider that them anything but our commons and part of our rights that run back to the Doomesday Book and Magna Carta.
These are our modern Commons; render them back to us, Hands Off Our Forests
Peter Plover