At 7.45 this morning eight women from environmental action group Climate Rush placed ‘FOR SALE’ labels on dumped trees they had found the evening before.
Dressed as Suffragettes with hand-sewn rabbit, mice and badger ears the group delivered the trees to Caroline Spellman, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The government is currently planning to sell most or all of the publically owned forests in England. These forests have special protection in law. The government wishes to remove this protection giving them the freedom to sell all of the public forest estate without asking for public permission. In 2009 a public consultation generated an overwhelming response asking for the expansion of our public forest estate, not its disposal.
Within the House of Lords the junior Minister responsible for the plans, Jim Paice MP, threatened the plans could mean a “very substantial disposal of public forest estate [sic], which could go to the extent of it all”. When asked whether public access rights would be preserved and conservation managed, the same minister said: “It would be a brave politician who guaranteed anything”.
The fire sale of the nation’s forests has been widely reported in the national media, however the government has made no public comment about the fate of England’s forests.
When asked why Climate Rush had brought these trees to the front-desk at DEFRA, Claire said:
We want Caroline Spellman MP to respond to the public criticism of her plans to flog our forests. So far she has stayed resolutely silent, making vague statements that public access rights and conservation will be preserved. Our national heritage deserves more than soft assurances.
Next Monday the government will open a consultation into the sale of England’s forests. When similar plans were presented to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments they were rejected. We want to see our politicians take such a principled approach. Her silence has forced us to take this action so that she might answer our legitimate concerns about the future of our precious woodland.
Maintaining the public forest estate costs the taxpayer only 30 pence per year or just three hours worth of interest payments on our national debt. We brought these dumped trees to remind Caroline that she will have to explain the absence of our forests to future generations. Over fifty years have passed yet we still remember Beeching’s Axe. Caroline must avoid the legacy of Spellman’s Chainsaw.”
