LAST week my daughter was walking her two dogs in the recreation area near Blackpool Bridge when a huge boar appeared on the track directly ahead.

The boar charged at great speed at one of the dogs that was foraging a little bit ahead. Fortunately her dog, a flat coat retriever, has been bred for speed and raced up a steep slope with the boar struggling behind.

Both of the dogs, the other being a Labrador, have been very well trained and one of them recently won an obedience trial a month ago in competition with 24 other dogs.

My daughter called the retriever which instantly came back to her still pursued by the boar. She picked up a stout branch, the three of them formed a battle line which caused the boar to stop and then shamble away into the undergrowth.

This is the second time it has happened to her when she was walking in another part of the Forest.

These boars are very dangerous, very destructive and should be put down.

If one complains to the Forestry Commission, that is supposed to be culling them, they would simply say that dogs should be kept on a lead.

The dog has a much better chance of avoiding death or injury if it does not have to wait while the lead is detached instantly when a surprise charge is made.

Wenchford is frequently abounding in families and children playing and there is a danger to them too.

On the bigger question, one wonders what the Forestry Commission is planning to do about reviving their woodlands generally.

There are huge areas which are now bare as a result of disease-ridden trees having to be clear felled.

The planting must be quite a headache. In addition to many species of conifer, ash, larch, yew, oak, and the beech is troubled by the ravenous appetite of pregnant grey squirrels in May.

A couple of weeks ago I found the track near to the nature reserve in the Nag's Head at Parkend blocked by a huge machine.

The crew said they were waiting for a film crew who had commissioned them to pull down an oak tree.

They selected a tree for demolition which was growing very well and tall and about 120 years old at least. "Who are you?" I asked. "We are Forestry Commission" said the leader and we are making a film called Responsible Forestry.

This means that our policy is now thinning rather than clear felling. I recall the same thing being put out back in the 1970s when in the area below where we were standing, some 400 magnificent oaks had been cleared and very few allowed to grow on.

The group leader said: "This is a working forest and we must have wood. Where else can we obtain it?"

I said: "I would try Russia. In Siberia they have thousands and thousands of square miles of forest, a lot of which has to come down so that they can grow arable crops now that we suffer global warming."

Only Holland, in Europe, has less forest cover than the United Kingdom. This week it was announced that the volume of carbon dioxide and man-made gases in the atmosphere was higher than at any time since that woman in Georgia had become the mother of us all thousands of years ago.

Trees absorb carbon dioxide and give out oxygen. That is what I call "a working forest."

In my forty one years' association with the forest it has given me hundreds upon hundreds of wonderful experiences.

For instance in the High Meadow Woods I once heard the call of a grasshopper warbler, an uncommon bird around here.

It is a mystery how its sewing machine sounding burr is subject to ventriloquy thus disguising the bird's exact position.

I recall lying down and advancing with the leopard crawl which I was taught long ago in the British Infantry.

I managed to get within a few feet of the bird still chirping away and discovered that as it did so it moved its head backwards and forwards through 180 degrees.

I crawled back some 50 yards back to the path feeling much enriched. I recall watching kingfishers, dippers, and though I have kept it secret until now, a black panther in Black Morgan's Wood down in the Wye Valley.

There is not a wild orchid to be found in the statutory forest, or any of the other indicators of ancient woodland, as mining, quarrying, clear felling and so called responsible management have done for them all.

Would the Deputy Surveyor kindly send the editor a summary of his management plan? A lot of people round here share my passion for the Forest and would like to be consulted. – Roger Horsfield, Bream