I have farmer friends in the Highlands who are forbidden from felling trees in their own
backgarden – and, ergo, can’t extent their house. The poor souls have to wait until there’s a windstorm and head out with their chainsaws at 3am to fake the death of trees – and, even
then, it’s touch-and-go if they are later caught by the tree coroners.
The regulation of privately-owned trees is extraordinary, which is why the fuss about forests – and yesterday’s climbdown – is such a farce. The government’s decision to postpone the selloff of the treeland estate that it proposed fits a pattern of u-Turns that I wrote about last weekend. But it is, fundamentally, a colossal failure of communication. You get the impression that the government is planning an Avatar-style destruction of mother nature – rather than a consultation about the ownership structure of the remaining chunk of state-owned forests.
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