COUNTRY LIFE
WE all know how many good and beautiful trees were felled during the war ; and they gave us more useful timber than anyone had thought possible. What is not generally known is that such felling has been in some respects worse since the war, thanks to the thoughtless issue of licences by the Board of Trade since it took over from the Ministry of Supply. Complaints of ruthless and indiscriminate felling have poured in on the Council for the Preservation of Rural England from a number of counties, for example, from Henley, Leith Hill, Swaledale, from Hamp- shire and Yorkshire. Indeed the Council, which held its annual meeting on September 26th, say that wholesale tree-felling has been and is their most difficult problem. Local authorities, which presently will hand over some of their powers to the State, are urgently begged to make interim orders for preservation in respect of woodlands, individual trees and groups of trees, now threatened with needless spoliation. One trouble is that separate Government Departments, in this reference the Board of Trade, act as if they wished to get the better of another department, in this case the Planning Authority. Trees are the very pillars of our landscape, and reverent treatment is demanded. At present the more planning is advertised and discussed the more complete is the indulgence in hugger-mugger destruction. Never has river-poisoning been more rampant, or sanctuaries (as at Braunton) more shamelessly desecrated, or scenic pillars more aimlessly levelled.
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