Wood for trees?

The articles “Government’s forestry plans thwarted” and Fergus Ewing’s Platform piece (both 21 March) brought visions of deckchairs and Titanic. There’s nothing like a bit of administrative rearrangement to divert from the fact that the Scottish Government’s own ten-year forestry planting target is rapidly becoming a mirage.

The problem for the Forestry

Commission is not that it needs to find out who runs it or who it reports to, but that it has been progressively emasculated by the influence of the likes of Scottish Natural Heritage, to the extent that you have to look quite hard in FC literature to find the word “forestry” at all. “Woodlands”, “multi-purpose”, “biodiversity” and “native species” dominate. Woodlands provide delightful outdoor environments

for leisure, recreation and wildlife but they miss the real purpose of forestry – to produce crops of timber, especially softwood conifers, to help meet the massive deficit of these products in the UK. And the optimal source of these products are the nonnative conifers such as Sitka spruce that grow so well in our environment. No-one objects to crops of non-native potatoes grown in Scotland –

why object to crops of spruce? Increased forestry planting is a real plus for future sustainability. It is likely to replace grassland, mainly in the uplands, and that will reduce the numbers of sheep and cattle that are a significant source of greenhouse gases through methane emissions. In addition, forests create growing carbon sinks to store carbon dioxide, as well as aiding water management. Hopefully a new version of the Forestry Commission will discover its true roots and promote real forestry planting along with its woodland counterpart.

TERRY HEGARTY

Green Park Abbotsford Road, North Berwick