I AM repelled – though hardly surprised – by the news that the coalition is giving serious thought to selling off large amounts of Britain's public woodlands, and that the Dean may well figure among these.
This is hardly the first time this area has faced this threat, the danger being that this time the Tories will cynically use "the deficit" to try to justify this monstrous idea.
By claiming "There is no alternative" you can get away with quite a lot of things, and citing the national interest is what will be resorted to in order to push this proposal through. Yes, the decision to go ahead with a large-scale privatisation of Forestry Commission assets is still to be made, but local people will need to keep their eyes peeled and be prepared to stand up and be counted should the worst come to the worst. Ancient Forest rights and customs will be the first to go, along with freedom of access to woods and lakes where locals have walked for decades. Royal charters, centuries-old acts of parliament, "time out of mind" custom, all can and very well might be bulldozed aside by "modernity", just as a tsunami smashes through a sand-castle.
Not all private buyers of woodland necessarily ban the public from their land, but many do through either selfishness, desire to cover up sharp practices or the need to avoid health 'n' safety-related compensation claims should anyone be injured while on their property.
This is particularly likely to be the case should private-sector forestry or quarrying firms move smartly in to snatch up such a tempting bonanza. Environmental protection laws aren't necessarily going to be adhered to by such individuals or companies – that old "out of sight, out of mind" mindset, enforced by barbed-wire and high fencing, means the Dean's flora and fauna are going to be jeopardized, and the spectre of pollution of the soil and the water table is going to loom larger.
Private forestry concerns would be driven mainly (perhaps solely) by the profit motive, and quick-grow, quick-fell conifers will be the prime means of satisfying this. So the Forest's magnificent oaks and beeches may not be around to enchant the eye and lift the soul for much longer in many places, and we'll be back to the old monoculture dreariness, with the accompanying reduction in wildlife and plant species that this brings.
Quarrying companies have been itching to get their hands on the Dean's underlying rock strata for years, either for aggregate for road- and house-building or for quality stone for high-end building projects. I can't see the county council stopping the Dean being used as a vast source of this material if the only alternative is to obtain it from new quarries in the Cotswolds, where many of the councillors have their homes. Can you? They've tried it before, they'll try it again.
Opencast operators will of course cite Woorgreen as an example of how the land can be returned to normal – or even improved upon –after it's been ripped up and gutted by huge oversized Tonka toys. I enjoy Woorgreen as it happens (great lake, great birdlife), but it's still not quite "right" sometimes (worryingly post-industrial in some parts, and not always quite "healthy"-looking), and I well remember the long years when it resembled the Somme and the noise, winter mud and summer dust was gruesome.
I wouldn't want these people getting their feet under the table again, but when the political philosophy is "As long as you've got the money, squire, you'll be all right", I fear what we may find ourselves witnessing on our doorsteps.
The wildlife will suffer terribly if privatisation comes. Felling of trees by private woodland owners will take place when they damn well choose, if we're not careful, and that means during the bird and mammal breeding seasons. New quarries and opencast mining will destroy vital plant cover and insect habitats, as indeed will any new housing built on land purchased from the state and wrenched from Forestry Commission control. Private buyers originally intending their new acquisitions to be used for forestry, recreation or tourism initiatives may well apply for "change of use" should the bottom fall out of their respective markets, and far worse developments may ensue.
The recent tragic events surrounding that magnificent red deer stag the Emperor of Exmoor pointed-up just what kind of big bucks (no pun intended) can be gleaned by hiring your land out to well-heeled shooters and trophy hunters – £200 a day per gun is commonplace in such circles. So our own fallow deer are an obvious source of easy revenue (particularly any white stags). Nor will there be much concern if over-culling occurs: "ker-ching!" may well be the only game in town for these "entrepreneurs". And God help the wild boar. A year or so back a (Tory, naturally) councillor in the Cotswolds (naturally) was advocating inviting paying customers to assist with "controlling" these creatures in the Forest. I can easily see some bright young spark who's OD-ed on too many episodes of The Apprentice thinking what a spiffing wheeze it would be to set up hunting lodges in the Dean (just like the Norman and medieval kings – well, it's tradition, innit?). And obviously, some private woodland owners will be tempted to use their land as shooting estates, with guests enjoying "days out" elsewhere in the region ("pot a peregrine" in one of the new quarries, anyone?). That's the problem: once any new "players" and "investors" have "bought into" the Dean, many will consider the "vert and venison" as belonging to them and them alone, for their own pleasure or disposal.
Congratulations of course to all those councillors, regeneration "experts" and interested individuals who have been beavering away so assiduously over the last 15 years, turning the Dean into a great big recreation zone and quasi-theme park.
You just wouldn't be told that building endless cycletracks in the woods, linking them with overhead gibbon-walks and open-air art" galleries and the like, as well as destroying the woodland's beauty and peace and quiet, was also placing us in danger of creating a very enticing target for private leisure and tourism conglomerates should it ever become possible for Forest land to be bought on the open market, would you? No, you knew better.
Found any cowpats big enough to hide under until the fuss dies down, have we? How about all those who kept insisting "We cannot have the Forest to ourselves any more." Happy now?
Doesn't look like we will be able to have the Forest at all now, does it? Happy with what you've wished upon us? And all those district councillors who were recently roundly assuring us all that the future for the Dean was tourism – "the way forward", no less? Still content with that vision now your Westminster superiors look like shafting us all?
I'll be generous and assume you're just "useful fools" and weren't quietly paving the way for your government's plans to become reality. Although if CenterParcs, Branson's Virgin Group or some foreign recreation juggernaut ever buy up the Cannop Valley, the cycling provisions, Bracelands' "Glamp City", and anything else they take a fancy to, I'll always be wondering. Just as I'll be keeping a jaundiced eye out for any of the Forestry Commission's high executives who suddenly get strangely lucrative new posts or appointments courtesy of "this government". Just as I'll be interested to see if our local MP – the name escapes me, and it would – actually steps down off the fence should the green light come down from the Dave 'n' Georgie Show, and risks unpopularity with his party's top brass by placing loyalty to his constituents above toeing the party line, or whether the siren call of ministerial preferment will prove stronger. I hope so, just as I hope this whole ill-judged idea simply becomes consigned to where it really belongs: the political dustbin.
We should fight against this evil, not just to save the Dean, but all of England's public woodlands. Ye gods, even Sherwood Forest is under threat! Yes, the historical/ mythical home of Robin Hood and his men. Why the expletive-deleted does "this government" keep blathering on about "history" and "tradition" so much, if it can complacently contemplate that? Mad, utterly and totally mad . . .
You cannot put a price on beauty, nor should you even try. Only a philistine or barbarian would subject the sight of a jay's blue wing feathers as it swoops across a secret clearing, the sighing of the wind in a beech tree's high branches, the gentle drone of insects in a sleepy sunlit glade or the soft, tremulous step of a fallow doe moving out of shadow into full view, to the dull, soul-less precision of an auditor's assessment or the harsh click of a valuer's calculator.
If the "Keep Out" signs start going up around the Dean and the "right to roam" finally disappears into history, Foresters won't stand for it. Far better to steal up on a sleeping tiger and tug its tail than risk the eternal wrath of the people of this area. Remember the Dilke? (Will we be back to fighting to save that all over again soon?) Think again, coalition.
Politicians come, and politicians go. Few leave the nation in any better condition than they found it, whatever they may boast in their lucrative memoirs. Many leave it in far worse a state, however much they deny it. I remember the last time "the national interest" was used to introduce a disastrous political ideology: the Thatcherite 1980s, when the "winter of discontent" and excessive union strikes were considered ample justification for the deliberate piecemeal destruction of Britain's manufacturing industry and the creation of soaring un-
employment. And I remember the repulsive spiv culture that emerged in its place, and how it put profit-snatching and money-grabbing above any other consideration. And that's the danger our woodlands look like facing soon, unless a change of heart takes place at high level.
Come back, Guy Fawkes. All is forgiven. – Andrew Stephens, Cinderford.