Chopwell Wood

At the beginning of the month, I received a critical comment on my film of the environmental damage caused in my local wood by the tree felling there. In this comment I was accused of stirring excrement. When the reasons stated by the Forestry Commission for the harvesting of the timber, I fully agreed with. As by selectively felling the Pines, Spruce and Larch it will be possible to replant with native broad leaf species thus starting the process of restoring the ancient woodland that Chopwell wood is, I was alarmed to see the way the work was being carried out.

While I have previously reported here that I have been helping grow from seed some of these trees, what I was reluctant to add was just how badly organised the process and the plantings are. It became clear right from the start that while there are good intentions among the people that should be the custodians of the local forest, there is a reluctance to actually do any of the actual practical work.

Further, within the woods there are many groups that use the woods and there has to be a balance of needs. So while on You Tube there are many videos of the mountain bikers enjoying the woods, my film was not about the effects of the Bikes and Bikers in the Forest. There are places that are designated bike tracks and for the most part I do not have a problem with the Mountain Bikers. In fact the young men who helped build the course are regularly involved in helping with other tasks in the wood. Further, the Mountain Bikers help keep the forest safe as simply they too love the wood and via that love of the landscape they too would fight to preserve the place.

The real problem for the woods is the groups that are supposed to be conserving and protecting Chopwell Wood. While the Forestry Commission has improved its attitude towards conservation greatly, in the past ten to fifteen years, they still have much further to go. There was a time when the Forestry Commission a government agency, totally ignored the environment, and for them conservation was a dirty word. While attitudes have improved, there still are a few people in the organisation that resent the demands to protect the environment the law now requires.

Staying focused on the local woods rather than critiquing Forestry Commission policy in general, seventeen years ago the Forestry Commission was, under instruction from the Government, going to sell the forest that is Chopwell Woods off. The buyer was to be a Quarry company who wanted to extract the sand and gravel with the added bonus of extracting the tonnes of coal that lay under the soil. From that battle to save the wood a community group formed to protect and care for the Forest, The Friends of Chopwell Wood. Over the years this organisation has done great things for the woods, but they have lost focus. It should have been this organisation that should have been monitoring and ensuring that the felling was not damaging in the way it has been.

Chopwell Wood always was an important matrix of habitats and while some work has been done for the wildlife, The Friends of Chopwell Wood, have focused a lot of time effort and money on the history and historical preservation rather than working on the conservation. Had the group, FoCW, used the past years to enhance the mixture of habitats the wood has, enhancing the woodland as an ecosystem by increasing the bio-diversity the forest would have much greater legal protection. All in line with the governments own bio-diversity action plan.

To give a specific example; Chopwell Wood was a stronghold for the native Red Squirrel when the FoCW started, but when I became involved with the organisation as an active member; the Red Squirrels were nearly extinct in the woods. They are now extinct there and I may well have been one of the last people to see Reds in the wood. I even offered to help lead an effort to try and retain the Endangered Red Squirrels in the wood, but was blocked by the FoCW. The Forestry Commission was supportive, but the Friends refused to fund the traps that would be needed to catch the invasive Grey Squirrels. While I would have needed to get some training and a Licence from English Nature, funding for this was refused as it was deemed to be too much like hard work and the FoCW thought that the Forestry Commission should be doing this.

There are unfortunately many other examples where the conservation organisation, FoCW, have failed to understand what conservation is really about. While they will tinker with building log piles or doing coppice work, the real conservation work is frequently ignored. Far too much of the work that the FoCW do and fund is park management that is trying to stop the wood evolving.

While the wood is a habitat for wildlife, it is also a place of recreation and leisure for many people. Last year the number of visits to Chopwell Woods was over a quarter of a million. That may be people walking their dogs, or the Mountain Bikers, or the horse riders, and it is only by ensuring that the wood is used and loved that the wood will stay safe and protected. It is not impossible to maintain the landscapes and habitats for the flora and fauna, which is also welcoming to the people who use the wood.

Therefore management of these habitats, such as Chopwell Wood requires care to be taken so that a minimum of disruption, disturbance and damage is done. In some of the beautiful places in Britain such as the Lake District where the shear numbers of visitors walking the paths was and is causing erosion the solution was not stopping people from walking, but sensitively improving the trails with local stone. There it has taken great effort, but the paths in the Lakeland Fells are improved by this without impairing the appearance or distracting from the beauty that draws people to use the fells.

I just wish that the same principal could be applied to the local woods. Where the way the paths are maintained is just by trucking in stone chipping's. While it is more expensive to do so, wood chips can be used. This would help maintain the habitat, ensuring that the paths will drain properly while keeping the sensitive marsh habitat that has enabled rare, endangered and protected species to thrive while still enabling the human visitors to safely use the woods. However, the FoCW seem determined to make the Forestry Commission to pay for all such works. When the FoCW could pay the difference in cost and save the taxpayer some money. Often this means that much needed work gets delayed at best or is never carried out.

This attitude of conflict rather than co-operation with the Forestry Commission means that when a real problem arises there is far less urgency or importance placed upon any concerns raised. Thus when the felling started the failures and failings of the contractors were not redressed.

As the areas where the felling was taking place were cordoned off to ensure public safety, it was not always easy to monitor the work. My first sighting of the work in progress was disturbing as the contractors were working in an area that was not within the cordon and the statutory warning notices were completely missing. But what disturbed me most was that three young children went very close to the working machines and while they were chased off, no one stopped working even though the children were in the danger area. Where the trees were falling, it appeared that speed of work was more important than safety to the contractors.

There were other occasions when I saw other harvesting activity that was far from safe, but trying to film this was not always possible. Yet it was the deliberate destruction of the nest site of a Red Kite that first alerted me to some real problems with the way the felling work was being carried out. Hindsight now clearly shows that the contractors were not willing to stop work, as the law requires, when dealing with a rare nesting bird. Therefore a broadleaf tree was cut down as removing the nest removed, in their minds, the problem. Even though they could have moved on to other areas of the wood so the nest need not have caused disruption to the felling work. It should also be recorded that there was other Broadleaf trees that were damaged by the way the felling work was carried out. Even though these broadleaf trees were not supposed to be touched.

With the spilling of the hydraulic oil, while there was visible oil sheen wherever the machinery went, it was not possible to pinpoint the exact cause. The contractors knew and had the Forestry Commission been and the FoCW been much more alert then the damage could have been stopped months ahead of the machine catching fire as a result of this leak. Now a fire in a machine the size of a truck in a woodland is a serious matter, we are lucky to still have the wood at all. The dumped empty hydraulic oil containers remained in situ for months. One effect of posting my film was that they were finally removed.

As my regular reader knows, I did have problems with my computer that meant I lost some footage that I had wanted to use in the film of the damage in the wood. While I know that it was not perfect, I am still learning the skills, I am proud of the film. It was made up of clips that I had shot for other things, but when added to the film of the hydraulic oil in the snow and the sequences of the felling (I know that was far to long and I am doing lines; I must Edit Better) it made for a film that told a story and showed what we are in danger of loosing.

So if telling the truth and alerting people of damage that’s harming a place that many people love is stirring manure, then I am guilty. I suspect that my critic assumed that I was against the Mountain Bikers or the other users of the wood. If I wanted to exclude other people from the forest, why would I write so much about it?