Topic: New trees (Read 6594 times)

Rich.H · « **on:** March 11, 2014 »

Spotted this today and at first thought it was a good idea until I read it a second time. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26515802

Looking into the details here is how it breaks down.

1. 640 ares of land already allocated to England means even at best NI will get a new woodland of 120 acres in size, to put this into perspective the nearest park to my house is around 75 acres and the longest side is less than 1.5km long. So all we are really talking about is an area the size of a reasonable city park, not exactly what anyone would call a "wood" unless the fat it probably won't be next to city hall qualifies the term.

2. The total for the entire project seems to be 3 million trees so we get perhaps 360000 trees then. But they may not be all in this new "wood" as schools and other community groups can apply for a share of the trees for them to plant anywhere they like.

3. This project is taking somehow four years and £12 million.

I have to wonder what is going on with the nutters at all these so called nature trusts and foundations lately. A new park is bugger all in the grand scheme of things, and to somehow say it can help link up pockets is madness. Sure if you were given a thousand or two acres to play with in NI alone you could do some good with regard to making green highways for wildlife, but not 120. This issue is just as bad for all the rest of the UK as the sizes simply scale up in comparison. Also how does it take an organisation entirely devoted to the well being of wild and natural places four years to plant that many trees. I will guess it will be because they do not yet have the needed permissions and land ownership required for all of the project, thus lots of red tape. Which finally brings us to £12 million. This number stuns me, most of these places use volunteers to do the actual work or at best work experience types, so their labour costs are almost nil. The trees themselves do not come plated in gold so where is all this cash going?

All this is in aid of a centenary for WWI, I could be wrong but all active participants of that arse of a war are now dead and almost all folks who were alive during that time will be close to dying themselves. I don't see how £12 million will do any more to highlight the tragedies of that war nor help anyone even slightly affected by it. In addition it will do nothing to help the current issues of wildlife preservation etc.

So next time you see someone at a nature preservation stand hit em with the hard questions on why they keep wasting cash on futile things like this where it could be better used into educating, lobbying for reform and preserving the places with diversity that already exist. A shiny new wood will take a hundred or so years before it have the ecological diversity to really be a benefit, by which time the existing diverse places are pulled down thus loosing any seed for diversity to spread to the new woodland.

RedLeader · « **Reply #1 on:** March 12, 2014 »

It does seem fairly expensive for what it is and you're right, the size doesn't seem impressive when in context. Seems like the £12 million could have been much better spent.

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Rich.H

New trees

RedLeader

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