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Falling at the first fence - Luke Hughes gives the facts behind public vs private management of forests

So the Government has shied away from the proposed sale of ‘ancient woodlands’, sheepishly mumbling into interviewers’ microphones that they ‘might have got this one wrong’. Michael Heseltine, normally impervious to political correctness, said on Question Time that he was unaware of any reasons that suggested private or public ownership of forests was necessarily better. He clearly had not read my blog of 8 February. Doubtless it was the prospect of a nationwide tree-hugging session, led by ‘celebs’, that made the politicians wobble.

I am visiting Bangalore, as part of a lecture tour for architects and designers about designing with hardwoods. Banglaore’s extremely smart new airport boasts equally smart advertising hoardings extolling a local project to plant 1.5 lac (=1,500,000) plantation saplings in the local area - highly commendable in a country that was largely de-forested before the Buddha began his teachings in the 6th century BCE. Sadly, much of it will be plantation-grown (rather than natural forest-grown) eucalypts and teak. These tend to be faster-growing, broader-grained and are generally less dependable, a consequence of relying on a regional or federal state to promote mono-cultures, rather than empowering owners who have a more genuine interest in the long-term future of the woodlands to allow afforestation (i.e. letting the trees sow themselves) to take its natural course.

The politically unwelcome fact is that forestry fares much better in private hands (at least in countries where there is a reasonably high standard of living). In the USA, 81% of hardwood forestry is privately owned, mostly in small plots (less than 10 hectares), in Europe, the figure is above 63%, with an average plot size of 13 hectares. In a recent US survey, the reasons given for private ownership are varied and include, in descending order of priority: the beauty of the scenery, the pleasure derived from passing it on to heirs, privacy, hunting and fishing, maintaining the integrity of a farm or ranch… only 30% said it was for the economic return from timber production. This is not so surprising - if you have to wait 60 years for a return you may as well savour other values less obviously measured in terms of cash.

The net result is that hardwood forest cover has, in private hands, tripled in the USA since 1880 and doubled since 1953. In Europe, forests are expanding at an annual net rate of 645 million cubic metres. In practice just 64% of that increment is harvested, with growth exceeding harvest by such a large margin that, unless timber removals are increased, the region’s forests may suffer reduced vigour and greater susceptibility to insect, disease, storm and fire damage. The eco-lobby correctly argues that wood helps the environment in all kinds of ways, including the fact that it helps to lock up carbon and increases the ‘carbon sink’. However, mature trees are less efficient at absorbing CO2 and all trees eventually die and rot - so the best way to use forests as carbon sinks is to harvest the timber when it is mature and convert it into products, whilst replanting more trees than before (or letting woodlands afforest on their own, which is largely what happens in the USA).

Cutting down trees? Private ownership of forestry? Increasing forest cover? Not what the tree-huggers want to hear.

Just to round off with some statistics:

- European and North American forestry accounts for 41% of the world’s forest cover
- The forest cover in the EU25 is on average 35%. Some countries, such as Finland and Sweden, have well over 65%; Austria has 47%; France, Germany and Poland have around 30%. The UK has 12%.
- Shipping timber across the Atlantic (more than 6000km) requires little more energy than an overland journey of 500km.
- Converting wood into usable building products requires far less energy than other materials; in fact, 75% of the energy required to manufacture kiln-dried timber is derived from biomass (tree-bark, saw dust and off-cuts).
- The embodied energy of common building materials (in Mj/kg) are:

              Dried sawn hardwood 2
              Mild steel           34
              Aluminium         170

Forest sell-off: Luke Hughes points to history and the US experience before casting doom on woodland privatisation plans.

The debate about the Coalition’s proposed sale of woodland has immediately focused on access. But there is an equally important issue about the economic and sustainable management of our forest, and, on this, discussion had hardly started before politicians and lobby-groups began to parade a truly breath-taking ignorance of history, let alone geography!

UK forests are not that ancient. The last Ice Age was only 15,000 years ago, so any trees have taken root since then. Most of the deforestation of Britain was by Neolithic Man in the 13,000 years before the Romans arrived 2,000 years ago.  That’s measureable time; old, for sure, but not that ancient. The Romans certainly harvested the forests heavily but they also introduced countless new species to the UK’s supposedly ‘ancient woodlands’, including larch, beech, maple, horse chestnut, sweet chestnut and sycamore. 

Across the world, nation states are notoriously bad at taking a long-term interest in their forests, especially when it comes to war. One immediately thinks of the Spanish Armada, which included 125 ships, each using up to 4,000 trees - that’s more than half a million trees even before you start to take into account the wharves to which they were moored or, indeed, the barrels of provisions for 30,000 troops. In the Korean War in the 1950s, 80% of the country’s forests were clear-felled within 3 years, mostly for fuel and, since food was so short, clearance for agricultural land. In Vietnam, 44% of the forest was defoliated by bombs, bulldozers or Agent Orange. An even more calculated approach was taken after WWII, when the Americans deliberately culled the forests in their zone of occupied Germany with the specific purpose of reducing German industrial potential.

A notable exception to this short-sightedness was shown by Samuel Pepys in the late 17th century when, as Naval Secretary, he went to great trouble to enable the aforestation of the Isle of Wight and large swathes of land around Portsmouth and other dockyard cities, specifically planning for the future requirements of the Royal Navy. Within 80-100 years, the Isle of Wight was covered with harvestable timber - a striking example of what can be done within a couple of generations. Nelson’s successful battles against the French might not have been possible without Pepys’s foresight.

The First World War was particularly devastating to British woods: every amunition box, railway sleeper, rifle butt, trench lining, carriage wheel, gun carriage and fence post was made from timber. Britain’s forests, like those of France, were totally denuded. Hence the creation of the Forestry Commission in 1919, founded with the best intentions to reverse that devastation. Over time, the Commission proved, like most nationalised bodes, to be inefficient, inflexible and uneconomic. It also pushed forestry policies about what species to grow, with little regard to the feasibility of their successful harvesting.

After WWII, many private landowners were pushed into granting 999-year leases to the Forestry Commission. As a result, estates were split up and all over the country there remained little pockets of woodlands, too small to be run by a nationalised body yet just about economically feasible for an operation with lower overheads, run by an owner who has a vested interest to care about amenity, landscape and diversity.

Is it really such a bad idea for these pockets, only held by the state within living memory, to be sold off? The proposed ‘consultation period’ should at least be allowed to run its course before the doom-mongers spin the argument out of control.

There are interesting parralells to be drawn with US forestry.  After the American Civil War a plan emerged to roll back the deforestation caused by industry, the Mississippi paddle steamers and the railroads. As a result of this plan, hardwood forest cover in the US has more than tripled since 1870 and more than doubled since 1953, largely as a result of natural aforestation (i.e. letting the trees sow themselves) and not from planting. Guess what? 90% of that forestry is on private land, in relatively small parcels - highly fragmented but highly sustainable, far more so than anything run by the state.

More to come.