Woodland culture in Britain
This is a reworking of a Telegraph story (behind a paywall) based on interviews with fire chiefs following an emergency meeting with the government yesterday about the risk of wildfires this weekend. There have been similar warnings in Scotland and N.I. Note that we still don’t seem to be seeing true forest fires (fire spreading tree to tree) but we are seeing burning of trees next to or surrounded by combustible ground vegetation like grass, gorse etc.
The England Woodland Creation Offer will become part of the Local Nature Recovery scheme – one of the new environmental land management (ELM) schemes – from 2025.
“Lord Duncan of Springbank is deputy speaker in the House of Lords and formerly Minister for Climate Change in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. He is Chair of Confor: promoting forestry and wood, which represents 1500 sustainable UK forestry and wood-using businesses.”
We’re seeing some tragic wildfires in Britain today including several involving grassland. The wooded area at Shirley Hills in Croydon does seem to be supporting the rule of thumb that our broadleaf woodlands do not themselves burn: the grass, heather and gorse that were gradually colonised by trees there in the last century are burning and in some cases burning the trees, but the fires are not spreading from tree to tree into the more densely wooded areas.
“A plan to use oral contraceptives to control grey squirrel populations in the UK is making good progress and could soon be put to the test in field trials, say government scientists. The mass birth control plan involves luring grey squirrels into feeding boxes only they can access, using pots containing hazelnut spread. These will be spiked with contraceptives.”
Hundreds of square kilometres around Ludlow in Shropshire have been added to the list of demarcated areas for phytophthora pluvialis, a fungal infection which affects a variety of trees including western hemlock, tanoak, some pines, and Douglas fir.
“The UK Forestry Standard Practice Guide ‘Adapting forest and woodland management to the changing climate‘ outlines the steps that can be taken to foster woodlands which will be resilient to current and future threats as a result of climate change, such as drought, changing weather patterns and more frequent, severe weather events.”
