Forestry expert Mike Tustin believes red tape inflicted on the industry by the English and Welsh government Forestry Regulators has played a significant role in delivering less than half of the planned new tree planting in 2022.
The government launched the England Trees Action Plan 2021-2024 in May 2021 with a stated aim of spending “over £500m of the £640m Nature for Climate Fund on trees and woodlands between 2020 and 2025”. The Action Plan said the aim was to “at least treble” woodland creation rates by the end of this parliament, reflecting England’s contribution to meeting the UK’s overall exciting and challenging aims of planting 30,000 hectares per year.
However, the Tustins Woodland Market Review 2022 has highlighted the current state of the nation’s forests and the negative impact of government inaction.
“We are probably hitting less than half the target of planted forests this year and that is mostly in Scotland,” said Mike Tustin, of Tustins, an independent forestry and woodland expert.
“Forestry Commission England and Natural Resources Wales (NRW) need to take a very hard look at their procedures and regulations as the potential for income streams that outstrip the bare timber values mean that new properties are likely to have a really solid future,” said Mr Tustin.
“Never has the basic ‘plant trees, absorb carbon, produce timber, enhance biodiversity’ message been more relevant, but this is not reflected in the raft of government departments who all seem to think they can say ‘no’ to nearly all planting. If we do plant productive plantations – which we can do – we might be able to play our part in heading off the climate change disaster we are walking into,” said Mr Tustin.
“As a country we also need to produce more of our own timber. If we don’t, there may soon be a day when we will have difficulty buying wood in the ever increasing and highly competitive world market.”
Mr Tustin added that a general lack of dialogue between qualified forestry advisers and relevant government departments is at the heart of the problem, creating a “broken” regulatory system.
“We are trying to engage all the time with the departments of the English and Welsh governments to ask exactly what they are doing,” he said. “We are not seeing much movement or long-term planning or any meetings to talk about the situation and there is an industry-wide frustration about this state of affairs. The regulatory landscape you have to deal with when you buy a forest just feels broken.
“If we did have fast and responsive decisions being made we could be producing timber to offset emissions. By growing trees you are sequestering carbon but you are also preventing the need to make high embedded carbon building materials such as concrete and steel. No one really values that, in fact when you grow quality timber you are not only putting carbon back into the ground but also reducing the need for steel beams and concrete pillars in the building industry because you are using wood instead.”
