Forests, Land and People
By J. D. U. WARD ENQLISH people are for trees and tree-planting, but against any forestry which is clearly recognisable as forestry. Some of the reasons for these prejudices are rooted in the past. At one time England, was mostly forests (with oak as the dominant species), and the forests were something with which man, as yet ill-equipped with tools, had to contend. Also, the forests were the refuge of wild animals and outlaws. In short, the forests represented barbarism—and none the less because they were the playground of kings and nobles who protected their game with barbaric laws.
Gradually the land was cleared of most of its forests. Indeed, for two or three centuries there was alarm about the inadequate supplies of oak for the navy, and half-hearted attempts were made (as a result of John Evelyn's whole-hearted urging) to conserve or re-make some forests. But oak needs good soil, and wheat was more profitable. Later, in 1862, a mere 90 years ago, came the Battle of Hampton Roads, to prove that the future lay with steel rather than with timber ships—and that was virtually the end of English forestry. Here and there a few eccentrics cared about growing timber, but foxes and pheasants were generally preferred.
By the time the Forestry Commission was formed in 1919 a transformation had occurred. The population had greatly increased (so that there was more pressure on the land), and we had become a predominantly industrial nation, requiring not oak but softwoods for our vital industries and com- munications—for pitprops and packing cases, for railway sleepers and telegraph poles and for general building—and there was also a demand for softwood pulp, unknown in the age of oak.. Now the coniferous trees which make softwood will thrive on poorer land than oak, and large expanses of this , poorer land still remained unenclosed or not profitably used. So the chief single feature of English forestry since 1919 has been the afforestation of poor land with coniferous trees—and many people have been offended. \ The land surface of this island is limited—to about 56,000,000 acres. Foresters would like to have a tenth of it, a proportion much smaller than France or Germany devotes to forests. But whichever way they turn for the land they _need (if they are to execute the programme provisionally approved by Parliament), they meet with objections. They are not allowed, as a general rule, to have good land suitable for intensive farming (and that is reasonable enough), but even when they go to poor sheep-walk country or almost barren moors, there are outcries. From the Brecklands of Norfolk and Suffolk to the mountains of West Wales, from Northumberland and the Lakes to the South Downs and the Quantocks, there is the same hostility. "Not here. We have unique fauna and flora . . . Not here, where families have been sheep-farming (one or two sheep per acre !) for ten generations .. . Not here, where Wordsworth walked . . . Not here, one of the most beautiful playgrounds of the people . . . Not here, where we cherish the grandeur of a centuries-old wilderness."
Hostility to modern forestry in England is aggravated by the use of conifers. But, as has just been noted, it is conifer timber rather than hardwood timber which is particularly needed (in the 'thirties the proportion used was over 90 per cent, of one to less than 10 per cent. of the other), and the poor land which can be spared, however reluctantly, for forestry is conifer rather than hardwood land. This point deserves some elaboration and emphasis. The greater part of England, if not of Wales and Scotland, is less than 600 feet above sea-level and consists of fertile "brown earth" soils. On such land the " natural " trees are hardwoods, probably oak, and people feel that these are the right trees to grow, the proper English trees, anywhere in England. But the foresters are spared relatively little of such land; they have come late on the scene and must make do with exposed highlands and such near-deserts as the Brecklands or the territory of Rendlesham Forest near the Suffolk coast. And here conifers must be the main, crop of any forest, at le4st on its first rotation.
A great deal of pseudo-scientific nonsense has been written about conifers poisoning the soil. It is true, of course, that a carpet of conifer needles with no admixture of broad leaves is • acid and breaks down very slowly, and if an unskilled or greedy forester takes crop after crop of pitprops, e on a short rotation, off the same ground, he is likely to do serious mischief to the soil. It is also true that many of the Forestry Com- mission's conifer forests would be the better for a peppering of "medicine trees "—such as birch,. rowan, alder or even poplar or beech—or groups or belts of such trees. The broad leaves, mixing with the needles, would make for healthier con- ditions in the soil, and in some places such trees might well be grown for that reason alone, even if their timber was worthless. This view is now much more widely held than it was 25 years ago. It may perhaps be recalled that much of the planting of the 'twenties was done in something like a spirit of emergency; the 1914-18 war had revealed the pitiful timber-poverty of this country, and the most immediate need was to provide, as quickly as possible, living stores of softwood, especially pit- props, against any future emergency. Had the Second World War come some twelve or twenty years later than it did, the State's early plantations would have shown by their produce that they were much better conceived than amateur critics choose to suggest.
But, while the beneficent effect of a few broad leaves mixed through many of the conifer plantations can be admitted, one favourite statement of hosti!e critics should be scotched. There is no biological or ecological law that conifers do not grow naturally or healthily in pure stands. There are vast areas of pure virgin pine-forest in Russia; in parts of Scandinavia the Norway spruce even regenerates naturally by layering; in the west of North America (whence come many of the trees used in modern forestry) conifers have grown pure for some hundreds, probably thousands, of years without harming the soil, so far as anyone can discover.
The opponents of modern forestry make the most of all minor disadvantages, and they have no scruples about the use of tendentious words and phrases. It is true that birds and flowers are likely to be fewer and less varied in mod-ern forests. but then forests are not planted primarily for birds and flowers, any more than wheat or clover fields are planted primarily for their colour. "Alien trees " and " regimented plantations " Of course many of the trees are as alien as greengages or scarlet runners, and they are as regimented as the avenues in the Mall.
These words " alien " and "regimented " are nearly always used in a pejorative sense; one does not hear rhododendrons or Japanese cherries described as alien, nor are the drills of the springing corn described as regimented.
" Drill " is, by the way, another favourite hate-word; otpers are "dark," "dreary," " monotonous " and " uninteresthig."
The two former have the justification that the shade of dense plantations (and if young plantations are any good they are sure to be dense) is not particularly welcome in such a grey climate as ours, where the sun is loved. As for conifers being monotonous or uninteresting, these words apply to almost any subject of which a man knows almost nothing; and inability to tell one tree from another does not deter " country-lovers " from expressing violent opinions. fik ssenti ally , conifers are neither more nor less varied and inteMsting than the very short list of broad-leaved timber trees indigenous to Britain.
Foresters have made some mistakes in the last 30-odd years, and they will doubtless make some more in the next 30. But they have also made some very good forests. It will be a pity if their past achievement is denigrated and their future work obstructed by sentimental appeals to irrational prejudices. Well- informed criticism might sometimes do good, but hostile mis- representation and opposition "by every means in their power" (to quote a published manifesto of the Friends of the Quantocks) is at best unconstructive and may well create an atmosphere of poisonous bitterness. Even where goodwill and intelligence prevail, there are difficulties enough, especially about the finding of land for the forest programme.
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