BY BERT BURNETT
This is the likely scenario when or if some of the newly proposed National Parks come into being:
Meanwhile this is an example of the glorifying of rewilding by armchair experts:
The rewilders shouldn’t feel proud, they should be ashamed.
This is land on which waders and birds like skylarks should be thriving yet they are all struggling to stave of local extinctions. The land they depend on for their very survival is about to be put under trees possibly forever as they have no commercial value.
Short-sighted money grabbing is at the heart of this folly.
Why are the rewilders not choosing a country to rewild that is already self-sufficient in food, unlike the UK? Why are the propagandists pursuing British landowners and shoots rather than pooling their funds to buy up chunks of the deforested Amazon or turning oases out of the Namibian desert? Why gamble away British jobs and livelihoods on ideas that will have zero effect on global temperatures while doing away with native bird populations? Do these people not see their policies have unintended consequences, or do they intend to drive country folk off their land where they have worked for generations?
This “forestry” will be home to ever increasing numbers of predators who in turn will decimate the remaining ground nesting birds that are hanging on by a conservation thread on what’s left of their suitable habitat.
That’s the truth of it.
This is nothing more than wanton destruction. It’s of no benefit to employment for the next 60+ years, it won’t noticeably reduce carbon emissions, in fact it may even increase them as the trees dry out the soil and fallen timber rots. It won’t reduce winter flooding as the trees are dormant through the wetter periods but it will line the pockets of short-sighted, selfish people.
Real farmers elsewhere must be looking at this and weeping at the sheer waste of good productive farm land that under their stewardship could not only have dealt with carbon issues but produced food for the nation.
Plant trees they say – it’ll save the planet – so I’m guessing we’re now playing catch-up as millions of trees across Scotland and Northern England have bitten the dust in winter storms. Blown over, smashed to bits, debris everywhere, heavy machinery and chainsaws spewing out noxious gasses and ripping off the topsoil in their clean-up operations which will go on for months if not years. Millions of tonnes of brash and branches left to rot, some maybe even being burnt to clear the ground … How much CO2 is all this releasing, how many more trees must be planted to suck up all this extra CO2?
Ah but rewilding is the answer to all our woes!
How are the various governments in the UK going to become carbon neutral and meet targets by planting trees after all this carnage? It was a joke before and it’s now become a bigger joke. It’ll be 20 years before any newly planted trees will have any significant uptake of carbon. We’re better off with cows in the fields instead of trees. At least cows don’t blow over!
Rewilding and green energy are deemed to be the answer to a Nature Crisis? This photograph is of Greece and the sight of solar farms is becoming more common over here in the UK. Aren’t they beautiful?!
How do these rows of glass and plastic monstrosities increase biodiversity and enrich species populations?
Rewilding is pushing some species into local extinction and if it’s being used to offset CO2 loss and these panels are the answer to get to net zero … what we have is actually a double whammy in tackling any Nature Crisis.
Put the rewilding professors back in school and the propagandists behind bars for what they are doing to parts of the Great British Countryside.
Anyone with half a brain who has worked these lands knows that these rewilding projects will only end in fires, extinct bird populations, erased human populations, more imported food, therefore higher food security risks and zero effect on global temperatures. And these people also want to get rid of cool burns? Have they not read about their like’s efforts – the crazed rewilders – in Australia where kangaroos and koalas burned alongside houses and humans?
Wake up.
It is not too late to reverse these ‘do-gooders” failures or to puncture their demagogues and false prophets so they stop spouting their lies.
Bert Burnett is a retired gamekeeper of more than fifty years experience.