Forester's Diary: We need to look beyond our little island

Years ago, that feeling was engineered by a night spent in a small car in a whiteout in the Grampians. Not fun at all. But I felt that feeling again – a mixture of fear, discomfort and loneliness – just this week, in the comfort of my own home.

First, the wind suddenly rose up, and then the lights went out and the whole power supply to the house went patchy and twitchy. I reached for my phone but – would you believe it – the battery was flat. A-ha, I thought. I’ll escape in my wife’s car (it had been standing in the garage while she was on a trip).

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I fumbled for the keys but my joy was short-lived as I found, once again, that the battery was flat. The car radio had been left on for two weeks. Wonderful. Before you jump to any conclusions, it was in all probability me to blame.

At a more reasonable hour I went round to my neighbour’s house and we summoned a local electrician who soon located the switchboard problem. But to treat it, he had to locate some parts which were from the same manufacturer as my faulty one, which proved difficult. Suffice it to say it all came good. The car was started with some jump leads and I had a cup of coffee and heaved a great sigh.

Why am I telling you all this? While drinking my coffee today, that sensation of fear and loathing started all over again when I read of the latest evidence of climate change.

What was it? The hottest temperature ever recorded in both the UK and the rest of Europe, it said in the paper. Smoke from forest fires pollutes the atmosphere in the USA and Canada. The world’s highest temperature ever. Wildfires again. Deaths from heat stroke in Europe. Mass migration of people trying to escape both the climate and starvation as crops fail. Migrants risk everything in their despair. Boats sink, victims drown. In the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Sweden and of course, here in the UK, politicians seek solutions to the inevitable problems which arise. But – and here comes that feeling again – there are no solutions. While this scenery continues to unfold, what is mankind doing? As usual, disputing silly squabbles, making war and burning forests.

Still! My diary may take a rather alarmist tone, but for good reason.

Just a few short years ago, forests were promoted as a major factor in a global approach to tackling climate change. Here in the UK we were promised – at last – some status and some priority for our industry. Obviously, we can only address a small part of the grand effort, but we could at least set an example to others and have a kind of missionary role in defining the parts of the problem which cry out for immediate attention.

I would have expected an end to deforestation would be the first and most immediate item on the agenda. But Amazonia still burns. Forests are destroyed in Southern Asia.

Canada and California blaze. Is there a plan to regenerate the US North-West forests, so wantonly destroyed?

Wildfires continue to wreak havoc across the world, including in Canada

What do we do closer to home? Our pathetic efforts to increase new planting are exposed for what they are – politics. So instead of actually planting new forests in this small island, our actual planting rate continues to fall.

I seem to remember mentioning the serious problem we already have with the lack of skilled, trained staff. And experienced and knowledgeable labour. If you can’t get workers to pick plums in the orchards of Evesham in July, what chance have you of attracting more hardy souls to plant up the hills ... in winter? 

Then there is the challenge of finding a sensible, sustainable and logical approach to planning, the whole subject of land use and the future of our own agricultural industry, which seems even more unplanned and up in the air than forestry policy. Our rural future, when we have built another million or two new, sustainable, energy-efficient houses, looks dubious. What is needed is real (not artificial) intelligence, which seems more than a little lacking in Westminster at the moment.

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What I would like to see as a first step is for us to take a wholly new approach to forests, not focused entirely here in our little island, but one which embraces international consultancy. ‘Forestry sans frontiers’, if you like, helping those who need help and providing expertise which we should now be sharing with the overheated world. 

For time has now actually run out, don’t you think?