Chopwell Wood under Threat

When I first moved to the village of Chopwell, it was the forest that really drew me. I was well aware that the village had a poor reputation, crime, drug problems, anti social behaviour, but on balance, I felt the presence of the wood outweighed any problems that there might be.

While my longest reader will know, I have had problems here, they are not anywhere near as bad as reputation would have had me believe. Also I doubt that I would be writing this Web Log had it not been for Chopwell Wood. The wood has provided me with hours of pleasure. As well as the means to bore you folks.

I also rather swiftly found myself helping with some of the practical work in the wood. However, while there was much to commend the group that help with the conservation of the wood, there is a complacency about the organisation.

Seventeen years ago Chopwell wood was under threat as the Government wanted to sell the wood off and a company that wanted to extract the Sand and Gravel that is part of the geology of the area, as well as the Coal that sits close to the surface. The wood would have become a great hole in the ground and the trees, wildlife and amenity would have been lost and lost for ever.

Well the plan was dropped but unlike most people I do not consider the wood to be totally safe. Governments change, as do circumstances and polices.

While the government has been talking about new and green technology for power generation, but in reality they are sticking with fossil fuels especially coal. There is a lot of talk about Carbon Capture and Storage, but this is a technology that has yet to be proven to work. If it does work then it really could be part of the solution, but relying upon a technology that has not yet been developed or proven is akin to someone choosing a horse in the three thirty race to provide your pension.

New Coal fired power stations are now planned, and this includes one that is less than fifty miles from here. This, will need coal to fuel these and the question comes; where will the coal come from?

In Britain we no longer have the deep mines, and what coal is mined comes from open cast mining. While there are open casts pits in the area already, to fuel this new power station will require more pits to be opened. Last year permission was given, in spite of local opposition, for what is a tiny open cast site. About a million Tonnes. Also about two years ago the BBC ran a documentary regarding the way that central government was imposing open cast mining upon communities, using the argument of strategic national need as the reason for steamrollering any opposition.

Now while there are no public plans to open up an open cast site over Chopwell Wood at the moment, I strongly suspect that this will happen in the next decade. Part of this will be simply that with the cost of the recession and especially the costs of saving the banks, Britain will need to reduce the expenditure on importing fuel. Therefore, all and any domestic fuel source will be used no matter what the environmental cost.

The local conservation groups though can not see any of this occurring, but even with recent harvesting of the timber in Chopwell Wood, it is clear there is little regard for the preservation of habitat and wildlife. Also, so many of the trees that have been felled were not that large to be of much use as timber.

It looks to me as though much of the harvesting has been more to do with opening up the wood for opencast mining. Add to this even the local conservation groups seem to pay lip service to the wildlife conservation or habitat management and regeneration. Often a lot of effort is placed on the history of the woods, the industry and the mining that was going on years ago. While I have no problem with that as an addition, but often this is at the expense of the practical conservation work that is needed to encourage biodiversity.

While we do need energy it can not be at the cost of the environment. With a climate that has already been changed and continues to change as a result of fossil fuels, Britain going back to the dirtiest fuel, is just not sensible. In the future it looks as though money will be the governing factor in the decisions that governments in Britain will use for making energy generation choices. The problem is that once we loose our local woodland we will never get it back.

Had the Friends of Chopwell Wood really tried to ensure that the conservation of the wood was the priority and not historical preservation, the wood as a habitat would be in better shape and would have the legal protection that the strength of biodiversity can deliver. As it stands, the neglect of the conservation measures that could have ensured that no government could damage the wood. There still is time to stop any future threat, but that really requires action now so that Chopwell wood will be there for generations to come.