'Right to roam would do more damage to the environment than good to
humanity'
THE last decade has been the most turbulent in the forestry industry
this century.
The Government's Forest Review last year, which stopped short of
outright privatisation largely because of opposition from the
wood-processing industry and widespread public fears over loss of
access, turned Forest Enterprise -- the commission's management division
-- into a stand-alone agency.
But a year after that review, details are still awaited over key
elements of how the reforms will work.
* the Forestry Commission's document on public access is expected
soon.
* the framework document for the new stand-alone Forest Enterprise
agency has yet to be announced.
* details of the review of the Forestry Authority, the regulatory
wing, are still awaited.
Within the commission's hierarchy, a number of changes have taken
place, or are awaited:
* a new director-general of the Forestry Commission, Australian David
Bills, will replace Robin Cutler, who has been largely credited with the
more enlightened thinking of the Commission, in December;
* the Forest Enterprise's new head, Neil McKerrow, took over only this
summer;
* David Foot has recently been appointed head of the Forestry
Authority, the regulatory arm of the Forestry Commission;
* Michael Forsyth, as Secretary of State, has replaced Ian Lang as the
Government's lead forestry minister, while the Earl of Lindsay has taken
over Sir Hector Monro's forestry brief in the Scottish Office.
In such times of change, the various sectors of forestry-related
industry are asking whether major changes will follow, or whether they
can plan ahead, confident that policy is settled.
Nevertheless, they all have their wish-lists: landowners and farmers
want assurances that the incentives to plant forestry on agricultural
land will continue or they will be unwilling to risk a long-term
commitment to woodlands; the commercial sector wants the Government to
redress the balance in a support system which it believes is heavily
weighted towards farming.
Recreation and access campaigners continue to campaign against the
Government's policy of disposals -- mainly on the ground that private
owners' record on access is far poorer than the commission's.
Lord Lindsay told the Herald that Government policy would be based on
two important strands -- looking after what we have got and making it
sustainable and useful in a multi-purpose sense, and increasing woodland
cover without planting in an insensitive way.
He said there was now a presumption against selling commission woods
where public access had a dimension and the woods were seen as a public
amenity asset.
But he showed no support for those campaigning for the ''right to
roam'', saying that such a policy would do ''more damage to the
environment than good to humanity''.
Kenny Murray, union representative of the forestry workers, believes
that the commission's public access review will use access as a
criterion for disposal. He predicts, therefore, that the bulk of the
woodlands in the South-east and South-west of England will not be sold
off, and that woodlands in the more sparsely-populated Scotland,
particularly the Highlands, will be targeted because they are under less
popular pressure.
One of the most recent estates to be advertised in the commission's
Estates Gazette as on the market is Upper Nithsdale, which covers 3723
hectares, almost 9000 acres.
Part of the same estate was advertised three years ago, but the sale
did not go ahead, for whatever reason.
However, Mr Murray now speculates that the Commission now feels more
able to advertise its Upper Nithsdale estate because the two MPs whose
constituencies straddle the forest, Ian Lang and Sir Hector Monro, are
no longer forestry Ministers.
Of the 120,000 hectares of land sold by the Commission since 1981,
71,000 hectares have been in Scotland.
Mr Murray claims that Scotland has taken the brunt of disposals -- a
claim vigorously denied by Lord Lindsay, who points out that Scotland
has considerably more Commission land than the rest of Britain. But Mr
Murray claims that one day we will wake up and find our woodlands closed
off to us.
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