Trees and Timber
The Forestry Commission's latest annual report summarises their activities up till last Michaelmas. Its most disturbing disclosure is that we are still, and indeed increasingly, felling our woodlands faster than we are building them up. This process started some time before the Norman Conquest and has continued without interruption ever since. Having announced that they arc determined to arrest it, the Government have virtually ensured its continuance by a very simple bureaucratic device. This consists of leaving felling in the hands of the Board of Trade, who have once more proved their ability to deplete our timber reserves with a high degree of pro- fligacy by issuing felling licences for 67 million cubic feet, mainly of the slow-growing hardwoods. This represents an increase of 12 million cubic feet over last year and ao million cubic feet over the year before, and is, as the Report points out, "far in excess of the annual growth." There have, during the past winter, been signs of a dawning sense of responsibility in the allocation of felling licences ; but until the Forestry Commission is given a say in this matter and the powerful influence of the timber merchants on Board of Trade policy is reduced we shall go on cutting down trees very much faster than we can grow them. The Report makes it clear that the dedication scheme for private woodlands is going slowly, but does not mention the basic psychological reason for this, which is the landowner's rooted distrust for a Government which does not trouble to conceal, either in its words or its deeds, its doctrinaire hostility to his long-term interests.
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