Where have all the trees gone?
Timber grants
EW sectors can claim to be as sustainable as forestry and timber processing: trees that are harvested for society’s wider benefit can be replanted in an endless, carbonfriendly cycle.
This is an industry which also delivers a raft of environmental benefits, offering important habitats as well as water management and flood prevention services.
Yet in recent years alarm bells have been ringing amongst processing and end users. Since 2001, the area of productive conifer woodland in Wales has fallen sharply, fuelling concern over the country’s long-term supply of timber. For a country that relies heavily on timber imports, the prospect of Brexit has further deepened the anxieties within this half-billion-pound sector.
Much-vaunted attempts to ramp up tree-planting rates in Wales have largely disappointed. While overall woodland cover has risen slowly over the past 16 years, conifer cover has fallen by 18,000 cu ha as the planting emphasis switches to broadleaf trees. On present trajectories, softwood availability in Wales will fall to 50% of today’s levels by 2045.
Paul Davies, shadow rural affairs secretary, fears the Welsh timber industry is facing a terminal threat caused by decades of under-planting.
He said: “The industry faces a major problem of supply and it’s important the Welsh Government takes urgent action with much more tree planting. Otherwise the timber industry won’t have a future here in Wales.
“Tree-planting ticks all the boxes. It is a sustainable industry, it helps prevent flooding, it stores carbon and it is a vital part of the rural economy with a potential for growth. That’s why it needs to be firmly on the political agenda.”
Mr Davies spoke out during a tour of the Clifford Jones Timber plant in Ruthin, where he was joined by fellow Tory AM Darren Millar.
The company produces more than 2.5m fence posts a year and also uses wood to make laminated timber, gates and 25,000 tons of pellets and briquettes.
The company was founded in 1948 and employs more than 80 staff. It is now headed by Richard Jones, the third generation of the family, who said: “Within 20 years the supply of timber from Wales is going to drop off a cliff because of a lack of planting since 1990.
“By then we will have missed the boat. But if Natural Resources Wales (NRW) could step up the planting of conifers, it would send a signal to the industry that there is a future for it. We have the ideal growing conditions for them.”
In recent years Ramorum disease has taken a heavy toll on larch in woodlands managed by NRW. While felled areas are being replanted, or left to regenerate naturally, additional conifer woodlands will be needed to plug the looming timber deficit.
In the short term, the outbreak has boosted softwood supplies at a time when private forestry – aided by grant funding – is helping to underpin timber availability.
According to the National Forest Inventory’s 50-year forecast, the upwards trajectory is expected to peak at 18.4m cu m of timber around 2030, from which time the effects of under-planting will be felt.
Thereafter UK softwood availability will start to fall away, reaching 12.2m cu m per year in the late 2050s. In Wales the falls are expected to be steeper: efforts to soften the blow, by capping production levels, were stymied by Ramorum disease.
Clifford Jones Timbers believes the company could increase its one shift in Ruthin to two or even three shifts if timber supplies were available.
“That would mean many more jobs here and at sawmills across Wales,” said Mr Jones.
“There are big investors who would be willing to put money into timber and tree-planting because the rewards are there.
“There is now so much demand for timber. As well as traditional customers in the farming and construction industries, there is a massive new demand for biomass fuel for energy.”
Evidence of this burgeoning demand was recently provided by Powys County Council, which has adopted a “wood encouragement policy” as part of its Home Grown Homes Partnership. This will ensure local wood is used in all future council home building projects in the county.
As well as highlighting local timber as a sustainable building product, the move gives recognition to the value of the forestry and timber industry to the Powys economy.
Doug Hughes, managing director of Mid Wales-based Hughes Architects, said the policy would hopefully galvanise more public and private sector projects into using timber. Doing so would stimulate local economies.
“Using sustainable, locally-sourced materials means less transportation and the utilisation of key materials that we can create and grow locally,” said Mr Hughes, a director of sector group WoodKnowledge Wales. However the wider perspective is not encouraging for timber production. Over the past 10-15 years the thinking has moved away from viewing Welsh forestry purely as a timber resource. Now the goal is holistic management.
Recreation has become a key target, as has resilience, and there is an ongoing transformation of the ugly monoculture conifer plantations which scarred scores of Welsh hillsides in the 20th century.
Of all new NRW plantings, the vast majority is now of slow-growing broadleaves.
While few would baulk at the goal of improving the quality of Welsh woodlands, it does little to tackling the forthcoming “timber crunch” cited by the WWF conservation charity.
Its 2016 Living Forests report concluded that by 2050 less than 22% of the timber used in Britain will be home-grown.
By then global demand for timber is expected to have tripled. Meeting this demand will be problematic: the WWF warned that many leading timber exporting countries are already either at the point of expiry or running at a planting deficit.
Mr Jones believes there must be a sea-change in attitudes if Wales’ timber sector is not to be left behind.
“Forestry is right at the forefront in terms of making money,” he said. “That has been recognised in Scotland where they’re cutting more timber in Dumfriesshire than we are in the whole of Wales.”
The Welsh Government’s latest Woodlands for Wales Indicators report revealed that, in the year to March 2016, just 348 acres of new woodland were created. This was significantly down from the 1,626 acres that were planted on average in each of the five years to 2014.
“We need to be planting 50,000 acres each year,” said Mr Jones.
More than 400ha of land in Wales is being assessed for funding under the Glastir Woodland Creation scheme.
Even so, new plantings are often frustrated by the length and scope of regulatory requirements, while private landowners also struggle with planning consent.
According to one critic, NRW must take a lead.
In a letter to the Daily Post, Susan Bowen and Doug Sommerville, who live near NRW-managed Coed y Brenin, Trawsfynydd, said: “We estimate the conifer plantation has been reduced by 40% since 2000.
“We are collecting information though Freedom of Information requests to show this policy is widespread.
“Though NRW speaks of necessary environmental improvements, there is little substantiation recorded.
“The money gained from harvesting mature conifers is not being reinvested in future stock. This amounts to asset stripping.”
Ramorum has hugely complicated NRW’s management of Wales’s public forests. At the same time it has also demonstrated vividly why a change of direction was needed.
Without sufficient diversity the government estate’s monoculture plantations are vulnerable to disease and pests, a challenge that will only grow as the climate warms.
NRW strongly denies accusations it has been sitting on its hands.
Last year it restocked 1,237ha of felled land, roughly on a par with its annual planting rates for the previous four years.
Moreover its “land bank” – clearfelled forest that is waiting to be restocked – is broadly similar to what it was five years ago and compares favourably with the rest of the UK.
Ruth Jenkins, head of NRW’s natural resource planning, said: “We are aware of the situation regarding the projected long-term availability of timber and are committed to play our part to address the situation.
“We have been working closely with the Welsh Government to look at potential opportunities and solutions. The issue is high on our agenda and will be discussed by our Board at its next meeting in March.
“It is a complex issue which is affected by many different factors.
“We are making our woodlands better places for people and nature, encouraging others to plant a broader range of tree species and better planned open spaces to make the most of this valuable natural asset.
“At the same time we recognise the need to create more new woodland and bring more of Wales’ existing public and privately-owned woodland into productive management.”
Rightly or wrongly, Brexit offers an opportunity.
With farm support expected to fall, followed by industry rationalisation and a medium-term slump in exports, a change in land use towards forestry may make commercial sense for some.
Once established, forestry can deliver decent returns that rely far less on public subsidy.