This article was published in a recent "Private Eye" Magazine.
The Forestry Commission, if its public statements are to be believed, exists to preserve sustainable woodlands in Britain. But what it says and what it does are not always the same.
"We want to see more trees being planted," said the F C's director-general Tim Rollinson last year as he launched the "most comprehensive survey ever of woodland sites" in Britain. "There's no doubt that woodland can be a substantial help with climate change."
The government says it wants 10,000 hectares of new woods planted annually to store carbon as part of its "low carbon transition plan" - the aim of which is to cut UK emissions by 80 percent by 2050.
Last year campaigners who had fought a long battle to save Bintree Woods in Norfolk from a Forestry Commission plan to turn it into Europe's largest gravel pit and landfill site cracked open the bubbly after the FC's planning application was turned down. That should have been the end of the matter, as the FC had promised it would accept the county council's decision as final. But the commission has now gone back on its word.
Despite claiming its aim is to "protect and expand Britain's forests and woodlands and increase their value to society and the environment," the FC has hired Wardell Armstrong to make the case that the woods should be destroyed after all.
Wardell Armstrong has a track record of getting mineral sites developed for clients and claims on its website that "we know the best ways to secure planning permission". A fresh application has been submitted. If approved, it will have the same consequences for the environment as the planning application already rejected. So much for sustainability!
