Threats to Woods and Trees
Seen from Devon, where the Woodland Trust started in the early 1970s, the main threats were the replacement of broadleaved trees with faster growing conifers and the removal of hedgerows and hedgerow trees to accommodate increasingly large farm machinery. In some parts of the county few would have noticed the change.
Elsewhere in the country the effects were more obvious and the 25 years since WWII had seen massive changes in the countryside. Determined to safeguard the country’s food supply successive governments had encouraged farmers to become more productive. By the 1970s, increased mechanisation and widespread use of chemicals had changed farming, which was seen increasingly as a threat to nature. Dutch elm disease would destroy millions of trees. The traditional products of broadleaved coppice fell out of use and the woods became neglected. The government had subsidised farmers since the war and the Britain’s entry into the European Community was about to make matters worse.
Since the First World War foresters had planted fast growing conifers to protect the supply of mining pit props in time of war. The Forestry Commission had been established in 1919 to acquire land and plant more trees, mostly in the uplands. It had hardly begun by the time war threated again in 1939 and this time lowland woods were felled. After the war the Forestry Commission increased its underplanting of native woods with conifers. There might have been less incentive to destroy woods if there were alternative uses for the trees. Some woods survived because of sporting interests but the timber and wooden products that had made woods essential for thousands of years were no longer needed or had been substituted with plastic and other modern materials.
By the time that I was employed as National Development Officer in 1977 Britain had the least tree cover in Europe other than Ireland. The Woodland Trust began a campaign to save woods nationally and two important reports informed our message. “New Agricultural Landscapes” published by the Countryside Commission was an indictment of changes to the countryside as a result of modern farming and the Nature Conservancy reported that since WWII half of our ancient woods had been destroyed.