Farming, biodiversity and a heather warning
It is good news that the National Farmers’ Union has developed a plan for British farming to become carbon neutral by 2040 (UK can meet climate targets without beef cuts, say NFU, 10 September). However, there’s a problem – it’s their plan and not a shared plan.
Irrespective of whether the UK leaves the EU, farmers will remain dependent on public subsidy, so the public need to be on board with any NFU-backed plan on climate change. The big environmental organisations – including the RSPB, WWF, Friends of the Earth, the Wildlife Trusts – mediate large swathes of public opinion. Consequently the NFU needs to get round the table with them and develop a shared plan, centred on land use, to make farming climate-neutral.
Only a shared plan to tackle the climate crisis, also involving the forestry sector, will lead to public willingness to continue large-scale taxpayers’ support for UK farmers.A policy of public money for public benefit de-facto has to have public support. Paul Brannen
• I agree wholeheartedly with Isabella Tree’s advocacy of natural regeneration as the best way of achieving biodiversity (Tree-mendous! How to grow a healthier planet, G2, 4 September). I spend much of my time working with landowners, commoners and the National Park to achieve such regeneration here on Dartmoor. However, regeneration goes at nature’s pace, and humans need to proceed much more rapidly to increase carbon capture and rainfall management. Also, much as many of us might want to, we are not going to clear our hills and fells of sheep any time soon. Sheep, as selective grazers, seek out and eat first-year tree seedlings, thus acting as a severe brake on natural regeneration. So, in practice, there is still a substantial place for tree-planting in an effective broad-based strategy for environmental recovery.
The charity to which I belong, Moor Trees, answers most of Ms Tree’s objections by collecting locally native tree seeds from ancient and semi-natural woodland on or very near Dartmoor, raising trees from them in our own South Devon nurseries and planting them in the same area. We have to the best of my knowledge never felt the need to use glyphosate or any other chemical to prepare a planting site. We planted 8,000 trees last winter and have planted 90,000 since our foundation.
This is a model that could reasonably easily be copied elsewhere in the country. Such an organisation, though substantially volunteer-run, has a basic annual overhead which, given
Chair, North East England Nature Partnership
the current public clamour for trees, is surprisingly difficult to fund. Philanthropic donors prefer new projects to established ones and, if they make offers, attach substantial match-funding conditions to them. People and organisations who see the value of “ecosystem services” should now be beating a path to the doors of operations like ours.Tim FerryDartmoor, Devon
• The simplest way for the UK to increase its tree population is to stop the (top) flailing of our hedgerows and to let what is already there grow. There are hundreds of thousands of trees, as biodiverse as you could wish for, already waiting in the hedgerows: our linear forests, just waiting to grow.And the way to make it happen...
Just stop the (top) flailing of hedgerows. No time-consuming seed propagation, sapling planting or protective sleeves round treelets are needed. And no-flailing will also reduce the amount of diesel-heavy tractor miles that are used to slay the hedges, and will allow millions of eager tree stunts to flourish and grow into proper trees.
The biodiversity benefits for the environment when hedgerows are allowed to grow again will bring tears to the eyes as to what we have lost in this field over the past decades.Alec OwenExeter
• If we are to improve the fate of our heather (Climate emergency to blame for heather crisis – National Trust, 5 September) much more needs to be learned about heather beetle outbreaks, which appear to be increasing in severity. The general advice is that burning or cutting of affected heather, following an outbreak, will assist restoration of damaged moorland. Evidence suggests that the reason the UK has largely retained its heather moorland is the management for driven grouse shooting. Grouse moor management has, arguably, also improved the resilience of dwarf-shrub heathers in the face of disease and pest species such as the heather beetle. The retention of both economic and environmental incentives for moorland management
need to be maintained to build resilience and mitigate climate change. Ross MacLeodHead of policy at GWCT
(Scotland)
• In response to your article (Plans for first carbon-neutral industrial area in Britain, 9 September), Drax Power is not only a coal-fired power station, but it is also the world’s biggest burner of wood biomass for electricity. Much of this wood comes from the clear-felling of biodiverse wetland forests in the southern US and last year, Drax burned 14m tonnes of wood and emitted 13m tonnes of CO2. Drax is also planning to build the UK’s largest fossil gas power station. This is hardly conducive with a carbon-neutral Humber.
Your article also fails to mention that Drax’s proposed bioenergy with carbon capture and storage project is an unproven technology which has never worked. Even if it did work, it is far from carbon neutral and would rely on continuing to burn millions of tonnes of trees.
In fact, closing down Drax would cut the UK’s carbon emissions by 17m
tonnes a year and would be a vital step in enabling the Humber to become carbon-neutral.
Rather than relying on false climate solutions, we need to invest in the protection and restoration of natural forests and the creation of green jobs in genuinely low-carbon renewable energy.Sally Clark(UK bioenergy campaigner for Biofuelwatch), Giffnock, East
Renfrewshire
• It is good to know that sales of battery electric cars have doubled in the past year (Tesla accelerates to third place for UK car sales, 6 September). But, as the piece notes, pure electric cars represent only 1.1% of this year’s total car sales. Is a reason for this the lack of coverage, good and bad, in the media?
I bought my two-year-old Nissan Leaf a month ago for half the price of a new Tesla. It has less range, of course, but in every other way it is an excellent introduction to this new world. Electric cars are great to drive and save a small fortune in fuel. My “green credentials” are also helped because I am part of Ovo Energy’s government-funded Vehicle-to-Grid trial. This means that my car is plugged in overnight to a special charger at home. This both fills up the battery ready for the next morning and exports energy back to the grid at peaktimes. My Ovo account is then credited with payment for the exported energy. Yes, there are still gaps in the network of public fast-charger points. But electric cars are worth serious consideration, not just as “city cars” or second cars. Please give them a boost! Marion LoweEasingwold, North Yorkshire
emailguardian.letters@theguardian.co • Join the debate –
m
• Read more Guardian letters – click
here to visitgu.com/letters
• Do you have a photo you’d like
to share with Guardian readers?Click
hereto upload it and we’ll publish the
best submissions in the letters spread of
our print edition