Sir – I felt a bit sorry for Mark Harper, on the receiving end of a kick from HOOF about future forestry management.

If HOOF really wants a target, they should get after Dan Rogerson, minister charged with forest policy at DEFRA, and even more to the point, at DEFRA's dim-witted civil servants.

Forestry policy was quite rightly labelled a shambles at the recent APF show (the UK's largest forestry show) and it has become clear that this government just won't risk another public humiliation such as that which followed the sell-off debacle.

After a lifetime spent in the forestry industry, I can't share HOOF's apocalyptic view of the private sector, which, after all,   owns and manages over 80 per cent of England's woodlands and doesn't seem to   commit any of the crimes which are predicted for a privatised forest estate.

The big problem for state forestry is being starved of money, which it is, and will be for the foreseeable future.

We can't even get reliable funding from DEFRA for research into a highly alarming disease of oak, acute oak decline, which can, disastrously, be expected to appear in our forest soon, and has the potential to make ash die-back look like an attack of the measles.

HOOF makes a mistake by being defensive. Let's look at a more positive outcome.

I make no apologies for returning to a theme I stated a year or two ago.

The best outcome for the Royal Forest of Dean would be to be in total local control.

The government should transfer its ownership and management lock, stock and barrel to a locally-based trust which could then for evermore decide its own fate.

This was proposed two years ago, with the Forest as a free gift to the trust and financial support until the new owners got established but was flatly rejected by HOOF. Sad, but true.

As HOOF says, ministers and MPs come and go but the forest and its silviculture, its ecology and its economy must transcend all these temporary tides and trends.

We are currently in a policy vacuum, and events in Scotland will make it even less likely that a Forestry Bill will make it to the Commons in the foreseeable future.

Come on HOOF, make a move! Let's get hold of our own forest, our own environment now, and not just snipe at the worthy and overworked Mark Harper and defend a dreary, unimaginative and financially starved future for our forest.

Positive thinking, please. You can do better.

– David W G Taylor, Past President, Institute of Chartered Foresters, West­bury on Severn.