Modern forestry - The chief agent of destruction From 1950 onwards, woodland was destroyed at a rate probably never

seen before. The chief agent of destruction was modern forestry: woods were felled and poisoned, and plantations made on the site. Usually the plantations were of conifers; foresters were obsessed with fast growth and had forgotten what woodland was for. Other woods were grubbed out and made into farmland. Development for housing, industry and roads came well behind these, though it attracted more attention. The modern conservation movement had begun in England with the Epping Forest affair of 1878 (p.416f). It could not stem the destruction of woodland, indeed the planting ethos infiltrated conservationists themselves; but naturalists trusts began acquiring woods as nature reserves, to prevent them from being destroyed and to reverse the decline in coppicing and revive the ecosystems that it generates. The years of recovery In 1975 it seemed that apart from nature reserves no native woodland would survive until the end of the century. This has not happened. The destroyers made little further headway, and by 1990 were in full retreat. The economics of forestry changed: even plantations on non-woodland sites were hardly worthwhile. A new generation of foresters had arisen, with better things to do with their lives than growing millions of identical trees. In agriculture, the need for more land was undercut by higher-yielding crops: food shortage had given way to overproduction. Plantations on former woodland sites proved difficult to maintain. Native trees recovered from the poison and began to overtop the planted trees. Matters were helped by a series of great droughts. The hurricanes of 1987 and 1990 plucked out millions of planted trees. Public interest in trees and woodland suddenly revived: a measure of this is the extraordinary success of the Woodland Trust. Much of the countrys woodland is now in the hands of this and other conservation bodies. The Forestry Commission is now in the forefront of woodland conservation, especially in the deconiferisation of replanted ancient woods. At the time of writing virtually all the natural woods that existed in 1975 are still there, plus a goodly number of those then thought lost to replanting. Not everything is well: although conservation coppicing still flourishes, commercial coppicing has continued to decline partly because of the counterproductive efforts of conservationists in promoting the recycling of paper, partly because of the increase in deer.

Rackham, Oliver (2010-08-19). Collins New Naturalist Library (100) Woodlands (Kindle Locations 1119-1142). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.