Friday, 7 January 2011

Our National Heritage

Annette sent me a link today that filled me with longing - a site where you can buy your very own piece of woodland. I love trees and forests for all sorts of practical and personal reasons, and I've always wanted to own some. They're not just part of our planet's lungs, but fabulous and beautiful places to get back in touch with nature.

Of course, £40 odd grand isn't that easy to get my hands on so I'll have to put that one on the back burner, as it were.

However, I already own a huge chunk of woodland. In fact, so do you. We all do. Our nation's forests. Which is why I was particularly peeved to find out that our current government is planning to sell off vast areas of state-owned forest to private enterprises, effectively giving the carte blanche do do whatever they like with them, including chopping them down.

Just in case I didn't state my feeling clearly enough: that forest belongs to all of us. And our children, and their children too. I'm not at all happy about it being sold off!

So far, 123472 people have signed the petition on the fabulous 38 degrees campaigning website protesting about the proposed sell-off. Please send the link to anyone you know who you think is likely to sign up.

As I'm unlikely to come up with the £40k needed to buy my own little bit of arboreal heaven, I've just signed up to help the Norwich Community Agriculture group with tree planting on their site on Sunday 30th January. If you'd like to be part of it, check out the Transition Norwich website here. Maybe I'll see you there!

Picture from Guardian Blog site as linked above.

4 comments:

  1. http://www.coppice.org.uk/Commercial.htm suggests that the income from an acre of hazle coppice can be be quite high. Pity there don't seem to any small woods for sale near Norwich that we could get together to buy! With the rising cost of heating oil a small woodland may be a better investment than PV panels. At least you know that the wood will last for ever.

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  2. @John, I was thinking precisely that, then saw you beat me to it. I'd very happily join a co-op to buy and protect local woodland.

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  3. Erik is keen as well - anyone else fancy being a weekend lumberjack? No singing please.

    I'll talk to Erik about taking this further. Better than leaving our money with the bankers :)

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  4. If I can't sing, then I'll opt out.

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