From The River Severn to The Wash Without Touching Ground

 

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One thing you you will continuously read or hear is that Britain only had sporadic forestry and the meagre forestry of the Middle ages is basically i9t and we are recovering that now through replanting.

I will comment that this is utter rubbish. It is a rebooting of history to make us feel like we are environmentally aware and rewilding and restoring our old environment.The Romans and others wrote of British forestry and this trendy "Let's lie and make ourselves feel better" mentality has now become dogma (you knew I was going to mention dogma, didn't you?). That or simply very - very - poor research.

My colleague, LM, has brought to my attention this book Historic Forests of England by Ralph Whitlock. Yes, I do not make all of this stuff up but base it on established work and references that anyone can check and confirm.

There is one passage my attention was drawn to

Therefore you can see that the rather meagre forestry of the Medieval period that we have "reclaimed" is nothing. Look at that part about squirrels again:

The Wash is a rectangular bay and multiple estuary at the north-west corner of East Anglia on the East coast of England, where Norfolk meets Lincolnshire and that covers roughly a distance of 150 miles or 241+ kilometres.  

\Above: River Severn to the Wash

Of course, much forestry around London and Kent was lost to industry and ship building and that is what led to the extinction of wild cats in that part of the country by the 19th century. Note in that paragraph how it notes environmental damage from man at one point was minimal but fires were set to make hunting easier by flushing out woodland fauna.

The forests of old Britain would have contained deer, wild cats, wolves, badgers, wild boar, the Old fox types as well as lynx and other animals.  We lost all of that forestry and all of those animals and there is no amount of tree planting going to bring them or the forests back. Even now forests that have matured are being cut down for timber (a reason the red squirrel is still being killed to "protect product" -and that killing is carried out in daylight and with bodies such as English Nature and DEFRA knowing about it.

At the moment we need more trees. We need far more greener spaces. We need to protect and conserve wildlife. With a UK government that is pro hunt and focussed on finances rather than those three 'nuisance' things there is not much light at the end of a long tunnel. we need far more people to step up, organise and act or in future a holiday will be taking the kids to the one acre park once a year for some fresh air.

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