Shall we destroy some ancient woodland?

The government is saying its ok to do so.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25599249

But, don't worry, its all ok, because after destroying some ancient trees and the delicate balance of flora and fauna that lives among such well establish woodlands, a few brand new trees will be planted elsewhere. I'm sure the wildlife will love that. Brand new trees, 1 or 2ft tall to build nests in, brand new bark with no cracks in it for the various insects and smaller organisms to find their way into, and I'm sure all the woodland flowers will magically move themselves to their new habitat too.

Whenever things like this come up, it bugs me beyond belief that the people running our country clearly have no idea how anything works. A politician asks his consultant, "what is a woodland made of?", to which the answer seems to be "trees".

I wonder if it is a prerequisite of the job of being a politician that you have to have never actually been in some woods and actually looked at anything.

 

A government that will authorise the killing of one our native species of animal based on puny scientific evidence at best will not care about the decimation of ancient woodland.....I'm not at all surprised by his comments.

 

I agree with the sentiment, and it's something along the lines of 'leave things well alone'. Back 3-4000 years ago before major clearance of woodland across the British Isles (or the land that we now identify as British Isles), seeing the woodland across the Isles would have been a breathtaking sight, probably not to dissimilar to the rainforests of Costa Rice (albeit, only a seasonal view), unfortunately agriculture has robbed us of our beautiful forests! Saving the last bits of ancient woodland, is a no brainer.

That said, our 'native' forests will be being competed with 'alien' species in the next century or so.

 

I think it could be something to do with this

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25452174

 

Its going on around here all the time, there is a local property developer, (no names mentioned), who also has interests in quarrying, he wants to rip out a few acres of ancient woodland in order to extract the stone underneath, there is a long wrangle going on, but I'm sure he will win the day, for two reasons.
No 1 he said he would replant after the extraction of the stone.
No 2 they appear, by way of certain sweetners to have the council almost in their pockets, they get permission to build whatever they like, eventually, they also seem to get a fair amount of council contracts.

The whole system stinks.

They recently ripped out a few trees and developed a large green field site, the aforementioned company had some in put, It was to build a new hospital, (not saying we dont need new hospitals btw), but I recently noticed a sea of those stupid green plastic tubes, each with a seedling bush inside, they are about 4ft apart and the developers will say they have planted hundreds of new trees to make up for the environmental damage..
Yes hundreds of trees, that stand no chance of ever reaching maturity, in a very small area.

 

We've got quite a few open quarries out here, they look awful, and even if they're replanted with trees afterwards, the landscape has already been ruined and scarred, and will take donkeys years to recover sufficiently to the level it is before they tear it all up

 

That's ok then, all the flora and fauna can just drive to the new one.

 

will the trees be shreaded and then hauled up north for the wood chip power staiton or will the trees go to a local saw mill and made in to planks of wood

And then there will be flooding because the trees have gone

 

They'll go to landfill as you can't recycle trade waste.

There will be.

 

I'm afraid this government is worse than the last one. Nothing but soundbites designed to gloss over the underlying policy of money at any cost.
We have a housing crisis for sure, yet they do nothing about the affluent who own two or more properties yet hardly use them. There are whole villages all over the UK (particularly in the southern half and especially the south west) that are ghost towns during the week/winter, yet nothing is done to tackle this. They can set up panels to decide how is disabled somebody is/isn't, but not a panel to adjudicate over a couples primary home???
I never thought that anyone could make this country as socially divided as Thatch did ever again, but I am changing my mind now.

 

when I heard this , and I dont think non of us are Scientists , but we are all aware how ridiculous saying they will plant more trees to make up for what they have cut down , so I know we would all say NO as the knock on effect with flora and fauna .
They have re- opened the open cast mining up in the valleys of south wales , I drove through it all only a couple of days ago , all the years of leveling out and replanting with grass as nothing else would grow !!! and they can now make ££ I feel sorry for the communities that live so close as in the summer the dust is horrendous and its the usual thing most days to find your car covered in a thin layer of coal dust , and it hasnt employed tha many as the size of the bulldozers and trucks cut down on labour , it looks awful

 

Even if we push to one side for the moment the fact that woodland is not just trees, there is another blatantly obvious issue that the government has overlooked.

Mature trees hold a lot of water, and lose a lot of that water as vapour from their leaves. This way they naturally regulate ground water levels. A young sapling is not going to suck up as much water as a 200 year old oak tree, the result, more flooding.

Then there's our CO2 targets. A mature tree as net carbon sink. I.e. it captures and locks up more carbon than it releases. There was a study some years ago now that found that immature trees are not effective carbon sinks, as while they are still in the early, comparatively rapid phase of growth, they release almost as much carbon as they capture (it is only photosynthesis that locks up carbon, once the energy they've produced is burned when the sun goes down, carbon is released again, so its only when the tree is mature, when its not really bothered about producing much more wood, that it starts locking up large amounts of carbon in its leaves, which then fall in autumn, and end up in the ground where the carbon really belongs).

As for housing and infrastructure. I can set off in my car and drive in any direction (except of course into the sea ) and within 10 miles I'll pass through housing estates marked for demolition, and past former industrial and commercial sites that now stand dormant. All that land is perfect for building on, yet invariably the developers, with government backing, choose to tear up the countryside.

In an interesting twist, one housing estate within Middlesbrough council's boundary was earmarked for demolition and has stood empty for years. The mayor of Middlesbrough, who is notorious for being ordinary, turned round recently and said he withdraws his support for the demolition because there is a housing shortage, yet there is an entire estate full of perfectly good empty houses that just need a few repairs and a bit of modernisation. They're good big houses too, with loads of garden space. It could be really nice if they did it up a bit. I happen to know that this is not uncommon. It beggars belief that anyone can say there is a housing shortage when entire estates stand empty, or that more land is needed for development when huge former commercial/industrial sites stand silent.

 

There is a similar situation around here too.