
Britain's Next Megaproject: A Coast-To-Coast Forest - edward
https://www.citylab.com/environment/2018/01/northern-forest-united-kingdom/550025/?utm_source=SFTwitter
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girzel
It's fun to consider that the British Isles (and indeed all of Europe) was
once a vast forest. I visited Dartmoor a few years ago, and the moors have
such a feeling of antiquity about them it's easy to forget that they, too,
were once forested, though they've been denuded since the Neolithic era.

~~~
mac01021
Were the moors deforested by humans for agricultural purposes? It doesn't seem
like much is grown there.

~~~
mrec
Yes, mostly cleared with fire around the start of the Bronze Age for crop
farming and livestock grazing. The soil's too acidic now to be good for much
except looking scenic.

Hipster Britain: we were Brazil before it was mainstream.

~~~
Bromskloss
What has made it acidic?

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gadders
I would guess the organic matter from thousands of years of growth. Normally
organic matter rich soil suits ericaceous (acid loving) plants.

~~~
mrec
> _ericaceous (acid loving) plants_

Not to be confused with erinaceous (pertaining to hedgehogs) plants.

Cacti, perhaps? English vocabulary can be weird.

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Dirlewanger
It stings to know that in the US, state-level initiatives like this are
exceedingly rare, and national ones are (and will continue to be) non-
existent. Even most local efforts like this are met with resistance, usually
from NIMBYs that have no argument aside from that they don't like it.
Americans have a very hard time seeing beyond their property boundaries.

~~~
mkingston
As a New Zealander currently living in the UK, the contrast in conservation
approaches is stark.

I've come to the conclusion that New Zealand is beautiful in large part
because a) it has a low population density and b) it hasn't had a sufficiently
high population density for long enough to ruin it. Not so much because of
broad public support for conservation. Luckily, I think some good basic
protections exist (national parks), and are mostly respected.

In the UK, there's so little wilderness remaining that it commands a
considerable respect, and considerable conservation effort and public support.
Noticeably more so, I believe, than I witnessed in NZ.

~~~
scarab
Whilst it's true there's not much of what you'd call 'wilderness' in the UK -
it's a small island after all where you are never more than 70 miles from the
sea, surprisingly only 1% of the UK is built on and only 7% is considered an
urban area.

Woodlands currently occupy 12.6% of the UK land area which is almost double
the urban area.

~~~
disordinary
Yeah, when I lived in the UK I was surprised by how much open space there was.

The cities and towns are better designed than those of new world countries
which sprawl.

~~~
hydrox24
The old—even ancient—cities of Europe avoided the mistake of suburban building
and have a naturally high-density shape from having been built before the
automobile.

~~~
baud147258
It's not visible in the center of cities, but an urban sprawl has developed on
the periphery of cities. Such sprawls are similar to those existing in the US
(car mandatory, few or no services, little public transportation).

~~~
blibble
the UK has the green belt system to try to prevent this happening

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_belt_(United_Kingdom)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_belt_\(United_Kingdom\))

if anything it's too successful

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jimnotgym
I don't trust the motives here, but in Britain it is really hard to find a
place where you can go and be alone with a campfire in woodland. 'Wild
camping' is usually only an option in the high mountains where there is CROW
land.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countryside_and_Rights_of_Wa...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countryside_and_Rights_of_Way_Act_2000)

~~~
switch007
Scotland has more liberal laws in this regard as I understand it.

~~~
arethuza
We have the "Right to Roam" here in Scotland which means you can go pretty
much anywhere you want by foot or on a bike and camp pretty much anywhere as
long as you are sensible.

No lack of wild places in Scotland, thankfully (although more trees would be
nice!).

~~~
disordinary
That's great, are people generally respectful of the situation?

Here the central and local governments have been slowly restricting the rights
of people to camp. This is because the Freedom Campers, as they're called,
generally don't respect the places that they're staying - destroying the
environment and leaving rubbish and human waste behind.

Sometimes when people go to another country they don't behave like guests
should and it's the sad case of a few ruining it for everyone else.

~~~
arethuza
Mostly yes - I believe there have been some problems on the shores on Loch
Lomond, but that's a major tourist area and close to Glasgow so I think
they've restricted some aspects of camping there. But that's a tiny part of
the country.

Scotland also has a fantastic network of "bothies" which are houses in
wildnerness areas that are free for anyone to stay in as long as you act
sensibly, which most people do:

[https://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/](https://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/)

~~~
disordinary
Similar idea to the hut network that the NZ Department of Conservation
maintains:

[http://www.doc.govt.nz/huts](http://www.doc.govt.nz/huts)

The sad thing is they're looking to reduce them because some of them are quite
old and the cost of maintenance is high and 1,000 odd buildings which are in
very remote locations are no doubt a PITA to manage.

But people are constantly getting caught in the wilderness by a sudden change
of weather and the hut network saves lives.

~~~
mkingston
The huts are seriously fantastic. For any visitors to NZ who have any interest
in hiking, buy a doc hut pass ($90 when I last bought one some years ago) and
stay in most of these huts at no additional cost.

Some of the abandoned ones have been adopted. You might appreciate this:
[http://remotehuts.co.nz/](http://remotehuts.co.nz/)

As far as I can tell doc seems to be engaging in more commercial activity,
buying remote properties that are cheap (because they're remote), and renting
them out Airbnb-style. My guess is they may actually make money from this
activity. And they may need to because of years of reduction in government
funding, in real terms. You may know more about this than I do.

~~~
disordinary
Some of them are probably border line historic, with grafiti and messages
dating back to the early 20th centuary. The visitor books in them are often a
great read if stuck inside in bad weather.

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mprev
The M62 across Saddleworth Moor is already breathtakingly beautiful, in its
sparse way. I realise those hills were forrested long ago but I’d be sad to
lose the views from up there.

Otherwise, I love the idea of returning even just this small corridor to the
forest it once was.

Interesting, though, to see The National Forest mentioned. It is odd to drive
down the A38 and see the road signs welcoming you to the forest but no actual
trees.

~~~
megy
The M62 is a motorway. It is ugly.

~~~
mprev
Whatever you think of the motorway itself, once you're on it you get some
pretty nice views from it up on the moors.

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darkr
The article hints at the driving force behind this vanity project:

> Current threats are numerous, including the endangering of 35 ancient forest
> tracts destined to be damaged by the construction of England’s new high-
> speed rail link, because tunneling or diversion has been deemed too
> expensive and inconvenient. Already, some critics are protesting that the
> Northern Forest project is a fig leaf—albeit a vast one—intended to mask
> neglect and abuse of woodlands elsewhere

~~~
dbatten
You can just as easily paint this in a pragmatic light, rather than a sinister
one. "We're going to clear some forest here where it's in our way, and to
compensate, we're going to plant some additional forests elsewhere where
they're more convenient" is very different from "we're going to spin up a
forest-planting project so nobody notices we're cutting down trees elsewhere."

~~~
notatoad
I'm curious if the new forest is actually a compensation that factors into the
"diverting the railway is too expensive" math. Is reforesting actually part of
the railway project's budget, or is it an externalized cost like environmental
issues really are?

And even if it is included in their budget, are they accurately valuing an
old-growth forest, or treating an acre of old-growth forest as equivalent to
an acre of reforested area? I suspect if they put an accurate value on their
old-growth forests and the ecosystems they support, then diverting the railway
would look like the less expesive option.

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matt4077
"Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall
never sit in."

~~~
vram22
Good one. There is some (maybe) Chinese proverb something like that too.

~~~
cpeterso
“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is
now.”

~~~
sgt101
There is a good story : [https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-
college-ox...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oak-beams-new-college-
oxford)

~~~
vram22
Good story, thank you.

Nice last paragraph of the article:

"Ultimately, while the story is perhaps apocryphal, the idea of replacing and
managing resources for the future, and the lesson in long term thinking is
not."

Also interesting is that it is:

"In conjunction with the Long Now Foundation. Modified from original video and
text by Stewart Brand at the Long Now Blog."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand)

My uncle had brought over a copy of The Whole Earth Catalog from the US when I
was a teenager, it was a fantastic read, and partly the cause (although I was
interested in such things from earlier) for my interest in nature, hiking,
appropriate technology, organic gardening, woodworking and other crafts, etc.
Done things in some of those areas, and hope to do more in the future.

------
leg100
Trees shouldn't be planted on this scale. The land should be left idle, and
nature will take its course, sprouting species that thrive in local
conditions, i.e. the soil type and microclimate.

They might be planting "local, mainly broadleaf tree species", but the
principle is still wrong. Why attempt to second guess what will work, when
nature will do it better than we ever possibly could, saving a lot of labour,
too. I'm sure the resulting woodland would be far more interesting.

~~~
Balero
There are not necessarily the local flora that should be taking hold. If you
kill all of the trees in an area, you re going to have to wait an awful long
time before they re-grow there, even though it will work, and can be support
(and I would argue should be).

Additionally the land may still have a purpose, such as for flood defense down
stream, in which case engineering the habitat should absolutely take place.

Frankly the lack of trees in some areas of the UK (even rural areas, such as
large parts of the Yorkshire dales/moors where I am from) would mean that
forest regeneration would take far longer (100's of years longer, as we would
have to wait multiple times for trees to mature before spreading seeds in the
local area.

Another thing to take into account is the local wildlife. Due to having a very
unhealthy amount of predators tree growth is hampered by large numbers of
deer, rabbits and in many areas sheep, which roam in un-enclosed fashion.
Mature trees do very well, but saplings just get grazed to oblivion.

So yes, please plant trees on this scale, but they do need to take their time,
and do it right.

~~~
leg100
The plan to plant trees as outlined in the article is wrong. That's not to say
planting trees at all is wrong. As you say for flood defence it would seem
like a good idea.

Re wildlife, yes they would need to be controlled if trees are to take root.
Sheep and trees aren't natural bed fellows. I'm not a making a man vs nature
argument here; support is necessary in all manner of ways, in some it means
taking a hands-off approach.

As for lack of trees in some areas, that might be for a good reason. Not every
bit of land is suitable for woodland. Where it doesn't take root, it's a hint.
And where it takes root, I would ask how you come up with a figure of hundreds
of years.

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stickfigure
When performing this kind of mass-scale planting, how do they ensure genetic
diversity in the seeds? Or do they?

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duncan_bayne
Next step: re-introduce lions ;) They had them in England up until ~ 13,000
years ago, so it's at least vaguely feasible assuming the forest was large
enough, and supported a sufficient number of prey animals.

~~~
40acres
Always wondered why the English national team was referred to as the three
lions, I guess this helps explain it.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Always wondered why the English national team was referred to as the three
> lions, I guess this helps explain it

Prehistoric lions in what would much later be known as England aren't the
source of that.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Arms_of_England](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Arms_of_England)

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pjc50
> So far, the government has pledged just an initial £5.7 million of the £500
> million needed to fully realize the project.

Hmm. This sounds like the new "garden bridge".

~~~
hardlianotion
Not really.

The garden bridge was a terrible idea and in the wrong place. This is really
quite a good idea and in a place that is at least defensible.

The article does mention the way the National Forest came into being. Perhaps
that would be the model here too. This is another difference to the garden
bridge: the luckless inhabitants of Lambeth were going to have to pony up for
a bridge they would have to pay again to use...

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avenoir
The United Kingdom is fairly close to the Boreal Forest Biome [1] which spans
across Eurasia and North America in a narrow band. I wonder if it used to
include the UK region back in the olden days. Does anybody know?

[1]
[http://w3.marietta.edu/~biol/biomes/boreal.htm](http://w3.marietta.edu/~biol/biomes/boreal.htm)

~~~
Alex3917
No idea, but I think the gulf stream might interfere with any plans to start
living as a sable trapper.

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invalidOrTaken
My sister and I often travel across Nevada, either Utah -> CA, or the reverse.
We half-joke about planting a tree every time we do, and putting up a sign and
calling it "The Nevada Reclamation Project."

(This is the part where, hopefully, some ultra-knowledgeable HN reader posts a
link to how I should actually be doing it.)

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helipad
It's strange to imagine places like Saddleworth Moor being covered with trees.

~~~
jpindar
In the US we have the opposite situation - vast forests that used to be
farmland. In New England you can be hiking through a dense forest, far from
any town, and come across stone walls that farmers built from the stones they
dug up while clearing their fields.

~~~
vram22
Interesting, any idea why that is so? In some other places, it is often the
reverse, i.e. forests chopped down and converted to farmland. Is it the way it
is in New England because farms were abandoned, forests were restored, or some
other reason?

~~~
adventured
In many cases it's likely due to early farming efforts that were shifted (in
the generic unit sense) to superior farm land. Outcompeted, basically.

Part of my family were Appalachian farmers that owned sizable amounts of
relatively low-value farm land. The land is difficult to work, almost nothing
is flat or ideal. The soil is ok, but only for a select few things. The
climate is mediocre for farming in many parts of the greater region.

As US farming industrialized, it concentrated, moved toward far superior
farming land regions. If you were a small farmer in much of New England, you
lost that economic battle.

~~~
brixon
I ran across this in Georgia once. A forest where there was once a rice field
(during slavery days). I thought the terrain seemed a little different than
surrounding areas and started researching. If you leave an area idle for long
enough nature will take over.

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ggm
woodland like 's-Hertogenbosch can be pretty open much of the time. I think
people who read "children of the new forest" imagine some kind of dense dark
mirkwood. its more like fields, scrubland, trees, ponies, wall-to-wall
daytrippers cars..

