'Environmental Vandalism' Prevented

Whilst away on fieldwork, I was keeping an eye on the recent consultation on the future of England’s forest estate. Concern for future public access, sustainability of national resources, impact on biodiversity and the loss of English heritage fuelled public action and stimulated an extensive campaign to halt the sale of 258,000 hectares of public forest estate.



In this current challenging economic period the government understandably have to make cut backs and raise revenue, this is where the coalitions ‘Big Society’ approach comes in. As I understand it, this privatisation of the forest to commercial bodies and NGOs was an effort to bring environmental management into the Big Society domain.

This however sparked public outrage, with the term ‘environmental vandalism’ conjuring up visions of industrial take over, widespread deforestation, disregard for the wildlife residing within the forest, loss of a valuable commodity, destruction of ecosystem services (such as pollination etc) and decimation of carbon sinks to many a concerned citizen. Campaign bodies such as 38 Degrees mounted petitions and within a few weeks rallied half a million signatures stimulating many to write to their local MPs. Of course with my background working in forest ecosystems both in my PhD and through forest ranger roles I felt the need to express my thoughts on the matter. Upon writing to my local MP I was impressed with the speed at which they replied but highly disappointed that they were planning to vote for the sell off.

Assessments were carried out and it was found that the sell off was neither popular nor economically viable. When ecosystem services, recreation, biodiversity, landscape and carbon sequestration were calculated the entire forest estate in England was valued at a whopping £1,800 million per year.

Luckily other MPs felt differently and in February the environment secretary, Caroline Spelman announced a U turn on the Governments plans stating that:
"I have taken a decision to end the consultation on the future of the public forest estate and I take full responsibility for that," Spelman said. "I am doing so because it is quite clear from the early responses to the consultation that the public and many honourable members are not happy with the proposals we set out."


My MP also wrote to inform me of the Governments actions to:

- “Remove clauses from the Public Bodies Bill which would permit publicly owned forests to be transferred into different ownership.
- Close the consultation on the Future of the Public Forestry Estate.
- Set up a panel of independent experts to consider ho we can better protect our woodlands for the future as part of a broader forestry policy”

Good news eh?! So, this is now going ahead and on the 31st March the panel convened for the first meeting. The 12 members on the panel have experience in a variety of sectors from the RSPB to the ramblers association to the Confederation of Forest Industries (ConFor). First moves are apparently to liaise with grassroots campaigners and stakeholders to decide upon appropriate approaches. The role will ultimately be to advise upon the future direction of forestry and woodland policy and to advise on the role the Forestry Commission should play in implementing this. Comments are required on how to increase woodland cover, enhance public benefits, how to manage spending on forests and the role of Forest Enterprise for commercial resource gains. The panel are due to report to Ms Spelman in the Autumn. Watch this space….

Back to the field...

It has been a while since my last post, inexcusable really as there has been a whole wealth of issues going on in the environmental world. PhD work recently however has had to prevail, with my last bout of fieldwork taking precedence.

So yes, I was lucky enough to head back to New Zealand’s South Island to collect the last of my data from the field experiments I set up at the end of last year. Just a three week trip but enough time to allow me to visit all 15 sites (from Nelson down to Dunedin), record how many plants were dead, how many had frost damage and how much herbivory had been going on. Currently my host plant (Macropiper excelsum) has a natural distribution down to s southerly limit at Banks Peninsula. This experiment was designed to investigate whether this plant could exist south of its current distribution. If so, it may indicate that the environment is climatically suitable and there is the possibility that it is not found closer to the poles because its dispersal is being constrained by isolation (i.e. fragmentation) of its associated native forest habitat.


Photo provided by Ben Rodriguez

Having the help of my field assistant Ben was invaluable, he was an absolute star throughout the three weeks, not only assisting with the work in the field but also with all the post-field processing. All of the data was collected in over a whorl-wind tour of the sites and we managed to get a significant amount of the herbivory assessments done at Lincoln University (thank you to all of those that helped at this Uni during my time of need). Although, the statistical analysis still needs to be done, on first appearances we noticed a few trends. Surprisingly we found that the kawakawas planted in the novel locations were very healthy, far more so than in the other locations. Interesting. Obviously I do not want to jump to any interpretations without the statistical analysis but I am looking forward to seeing what kind of trends we get from these data.

So, back in the UK now and on to the analysis and write up, will keep the blog posted with any interesting findings and any relevant environmental issues going on in the news…