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Britain's Next Megaproject: A Coast-To-Coast Forest
- matt4077 9y ago"Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- vram22 9y agoGood one. There is some (maybe) Chinese proverb something like that too.
- cpeterso 9y ago“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”
- sgt101 9y agoThere is a good story : https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-college-oxford https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-college-ox...
- rb808 9y agoThanks, that is a delightful read.
- vram22 9y agoGood story, thank you. Nice last paragraph of the article: "Ultimately, while the story is perhaps apocryphal, the idea of replacing and managing resources for the future, and the lesson in long term thinking is not." Also interesting is that it is: "In conjunction with the Long Now Foundation. Modified from original video and text by Stewart Brand at the Long Now Blog." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand My uncle had brought over a copy of The Whole Earth Catalog from the US when I was a teenager, it was a fantastic read, and partly the cause (although I was interested in such things from earlier) for my interest in nature, hiking, appropriate technology, organic gardening, woodworking and other crafts, etc. Done things in some of those areas, and hope to do more in the future.
- girzel 9y agoIt's fun to consider that the British Isles (and indeed all of Europe) was once a vast forest. I visited Dartmoor a few years ago, and the moors have such a feeling of antiquity about them it's easy to forget that they, too, were once forested, though they've been denuded since the Neolithic era.
- mac01021 9y agoWere the moors deforested by humans for agricultural purposes? It doesn't seem like much is grown there.
- throwaway894345 9y agoMy understanding is that much of Europe was deforested during the Bronze and Iron ages, mostly for fuel to smelt ores. Hopefully someone who knows more can comment?
- mrec 9y agoYes, mostly cleared with fire around the start of the Bronze Age for crop farming and livestock grazing. The soil's too acidic now to be good for much except looking scenic. Hipster Britain: we were Brazil before it was mainstream.
- Bromskloss 9y agoWhat has made it acidic?
- helipad 9y agoIt's strange to imagine places like Saddleworth Moor being covered with trees.
- jpindar 9y agoIn the US we have the opposite situation - vast forests that used to be farmland. In New England you can be hiking through a dense forest, far from any town, and come across stone walls that farmers built from the stones they dug up while clearing their fields.
- vram22 9y agoInteresting, any idea why that is so? In some other places, it is often the reverse, i.e. forests chopped down and converted to farmland. Is it the way it is in New England because farms were abandoned, forests were restored, or some other reason?
- adventured 9y agoIn many cases it's likely due to early farming efforts that were shifted (in the generic unit sense) to superior farm land. Outcompeted, basically. Part of my family were Appalachian farmers that owned sizable amounts of relatively low-value farm land. The land is difficult to work, almost nothing is flat or ideal. The soil is ok, but only for a select few things. The climate is mediocre for farming in many parts of the greater region. As US farming industrialized, it concentrated, moved toward far superior farming land regions. If you were a small farmer in much of New England, you lost that economic battle.
- brixon 9y agoI ran across this in Georgia once. A forest where there was once a rice field (during slavery days). I thought the terrain seemed a little different than surrounding areas and started researching. If you leave an area idle for long enough nature will take over.
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- darkr 9y agoThe article hints at the driving force behind this vanity project: > Current threats are numerous, including the endangering of 35 ancient forest tracts destined to be damaged by the construction of England’s new high-speed rail link, because tunneling or diversion has been deemed too expensive and inconvenient. Already, some critics are protesting that the Northern Forest project is a fig leaf—albeit a vast one—intended to mask neglect and abuse of woodlands elsewhere
- keeganjw 9y agoI don't know that I'd call it a vanity project. There are a ton of tangible benefits.
- vram22 9y agoYes, there are. I had read this book about the ecology of forests and seas as a kid, thought it was really good: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1481687.The_Forest_and_the_Sea https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1481687.The_Forest_and_t... Author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marston_Bates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marston_Bates It went into a lot of really interesting detail about symbiosis between different species and how many life forms and aspects of nature are interrelated and interdependent.
- sgt101 9y agoIt would be useful to quantify the scale of the 35 sites for cutting so we know if this is a fig leaf or compensation or if its scale is completely different.
- dbatten 9y agoYou can just as easily paint this in a pragmatic light, rather than a sinister one. "We're going to clear some forest here where it's in our way, and to compensate, we're going to plant some additional forests elsewhere where they're more convenient" is very different from "we're going to spin up a forest-planting project so nobody notices we're cutting down trees elsewhere."
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- jimnotgym 9y agoI don't trust the motives here, but in Britain it is really hard to find a place where you can go and be alone with a campfire in woodland. 'Wild camping' is usually only an option in the high mountains where there is CROW land. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countryside_and_Rights_of_Way_Act_2000 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countryside_and_Rights_of_Wa...
- switch007 9y agoScotland has more liberal laws in this regard as I understand it.
- arethuza 9y agoWe have the "Right to Roam" here in Scotland which means you can go pretty much anywhere you want by foot or on a bike and camp pretty much anywhere as long as you are sensible. No lack of wild places in Scotland, thankfully (although more trees would be nice!).
- disordinary 9y agoThat's great, are people generally respectful of the situation? Here the central and local governments have been slowly restricting the rights of people to camp. This is because the Freedom Campers, as they're called, generally don't respect the places that they're staying - destroying the environment and leaving rubbish and human waste behind. Sometimes when people go to another country they don't behave like guests should and it's the sad case of a few ruining it for everyone else.
- vilmosi 9y agoWhere's "here"?
- disordinary 9y agoAotearoa New Zealand
- Dirlewanger 9y agoIt stings to know that in the US, state-level initiatives like this are exceedingly rare, and national ones are (and will continue to be) non-existent. Even most local efforts like this are met with resistance, usually from NIMBYs that have no argument aside from that they don't like it. Americans have a very hard time seeing beyond their property boundaries.
- Sevii 9y agoThen we also have states where over 50% of the land area is national parks.
- dx034 9y agoBut those are often desert. And desertification could (in part) be caused by overly protecting the area (e.g. not allowing cattle). Good video to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI
- nwatson 9y agoUS forest area has changed negligibly since 1900: https://www.thoughtco.com/us-forest-facts-on-forestland-1343034 https://www.thoughtco.com/us-forest-facts-on-forestland-1343... .
- bdamm 9y agoThis seems very appropriate as a state-level issue. There are many states larger than England. New York State, for example, is larger. Why should it be federal? Besides, federal agencies already directly control enormous tracts of land in the west. State-level control over land use is a good thing.
- mkingston 9y agoAs a New Zealander currently living in the UK, the contrast in conservation approaches is stark. I've come to the conclusion that New Zealand is beautiful in large part because a) it has a low population density and b) it hasn't had a sufficiently high population density for long enough to ruin it. Not so much because of broad public support for conservation. Luckily, I think some good basic protections exist (national parks), and are mostly respected. In the UK, there's so little wilderness remaining that it commands a considerable respect, and considerable conservation effort and public support. Noticeably more so, I believe, than I witnessed in NZ.
- avenoir 9y agoThe United Kingdom is fairly close to the Boreal Forest Biome [1] which spans across Eurasia and North America in a narrow band. I wonder if it used to include the UK region back in the olden days. Does anybody know? [1] http://w3.marietta.edu/~biol/biomes/boreal.htm http://w3.marietta.edu/~biol/biomes/boreal.htm
- Alex3917 9y agoNo idea, but I think the gulf stream might interfere with any plans to start living as a sable trapper.
- mprev 9y agoThe M62 across Saddleworth Moor is already breathtakingly beautiful, in its sparse way. I realise those hills were forrested long ago but I’d be sad to lose the views from up there. Otherwise, I love the idea of returning even just this small corridor to the forest it once was. Interesting, though, to see The National Forest mentioned. It is odd to drive down the A38 and see the road signs welcoming you to the forest but no actual trees.
- vermooten 9y agoYep, looks like they plan to plant trees in the Dales too WTF. I can't see *why& they're doing it. (I'm naturally suspicious of anything a Tory govt would do something which, on the surface, seems pretty cool.)
- megy 9y agoThe M62 is a motorway. It is ugly.
- mprev 9y agoWhatever you think of the motorway itself, once you're on it you get some pretty nice views from it up on the moors.
- stickfigure 9y agoWhen performing this kind of mass-scale planting, how do they ensure genetic diversity in the seeds? Or do they?
- pjc50 9y ago> So far, the government has pledged just an initial £5.7 million of the £500 million needed to fully realize the project. Hmm. This sounds like the new "garden bridge".
- hardlianotion 9y agoNot really. The garden bridge was a terrible idea and in the wrong place. This is really quite a good idea and in a place that is at least defensible. The article does mention the way the National Forest came into being. Perhaps that would be the model here too. This is another difference to the garden bridge: the luckless inhabitants of Lambeth were going to have to pony up for a bridge they would have to pay again to use...
- duncan_bayne 9y agoNext step: re-introduce lions ;) They had them in England up until ~ 13,000 years ago, so it's at least vaguely feasible assuming the forest was large enough, and supported a sufficient number of prey animals.
- 40acres 9y agoAlways wondered why the English national team was referred to as the three lions, I guess this helps explain it.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Always wondered why the English national team was referred to as the three lions, I guess this helps explain it Prehistoric lions in what would much later be known as England aren't the source of that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Arms_of_England https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Arms_of_England
- mkingston 9y agoWildwood Trust is investigating reintroduction of wolves and lynxes. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/06/30/wolves-brown-bears-could-return-british-countryside-naturally/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/06/30/wolves-brown-b...
- leg100 9y agoTrees shouldn't be planted on this scale. The land should be left idle, and nature will take its course, sprouting species that thrive in local conditions, i.e. the soil type and microclimate. They might be planting "local, mainly broadleaf tree species", but the principle is still wrong. Why attempt to second guess what will work, when nature will do it better than we ever possibly could, saving a lot of labour, too. I'm sure the resulting woodland would be far more interesting.
- Balero 9y agoThere are not necessarily the local flora that should be taking hold. If you kill all of the trees in an area, you re going to have to wait an awful long time before they re-grow there, even though it will work, and can be support (and I would argue should be). Additionally the land may still have a purpose, such as for flood defense down stream, in which case engineering the habitat should absolutely take place. Frankly the lack of trees in some areas of the UK (even rural areas, such as large parts of the Yorkshire dales/moors where I am from) would mean that forest regeneration would take far longer (100's of years longer, as we would have to wait multiple times for trees to mature before spreading seeds in the local area. Another thing to take into account is the local wildlife. Due to having a very unhealthy amount of predators tree growth is hampered by large numbers of deer, rabbits and in many areas sheep, which roam in un-enclosed fashion. Mature trees do very well, but saplings just get grazed to oblivion. So yes, please plant trees on this scale, but they do need to take their time, and do it right.
- leg100 9y agoThe plan to plant trees as outlined in the article is wrong. That's not to say planting trees at all is wrong. As you say for flood defence it would seem like a good idea. Re wildlife, yes they would need to be controlled if trees are to take root. Sheep and trees aren't natural bed fellows. I'm not a making a man vs nature argument here; support is necessary in all manner of ways, in some it means taking a hands-off approach. As for lack of trees in some areas, that might be for a good reason. Not every bit of land is suitable for woodland. Where it doesn't take root, it's a hint. And where it takes root, I would ask how you come up with a figure of hundreds of years.
- ggm 9y agowoodland like 's-Hertogenbosch can be pretty open much of the time. I think people who read "children of the new forest" imagine some kind of dense dark mirkwood. its more like fields, scrubland, trees, ponies, wall-to-wall daytrippers cars..
- invalidOrTaken 9y agoMy sister and I often travel across Nevada, either Utah -> CA, or the reverse. We half-joke about planting a tree every time we do, and putting up a sign and calling it "The Nevada Reclamation Project." (This is the part where, hopefully, some ultra-knowledgeable HN reader posts a link to how I should actually be doing it.)