Chamber and committees

Help Trees Help Us submission of 2 March 2022

PE1812/Y - Protect Scotland's remaining ancient, native and semi-native woodlands and woodland floors

Our local community in Argyll is powerless to stop the destruction of our environment. Our ancient woodland and veteran trees are felled at will and invaded by monoculture, despite existing guidance and regulations that are supposed to protect them. Our Gareloch is polluted by Faslane Naval Base which was branded ‘Poor’ for environmental performance by SEPA in 2019. A never-ending tide of marine and plastic pollution means local people are regularly out picking dangerous waste off our shores. Rising seawaters see our defences regularly breached. Invasive, non-native conifer plantations, that degrade our soil and acidify our waterways, are obliterating our hills and colonising our broadleaf woods. Our country is being sold off to faceless foreign investment companies in order to help high wealth individuals avoid paying taxes.

Our own taxes are used against us by blinkered, self-interested company and authority bullies who make decisions in silos, ignore the big picture and dismiss our pleas to protect our environment and productive land. They waste our time with their sham community consultation processes and lie to us and our political representatives.

Launching the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on 28/02/22, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said inaction on climate change is “a damming indictment of failed climate leadership”, “This abdication of leadership is criminal.” and “Delay means death”. If Antonio and thousands of scientists are being ignored, what chance do local communities and our voiceless trees have?

It is obvious that trees planted now must stay in the ground to stem the relentless decline of biodiversity (as acknowledged in the Scottish Government’s latest submission to this petition) and slow the rate of global warming. Every effort should be made to end deforestation and find alternatives to timber that recycles our waste and stops plastic and other pollutants destroying our seas, rivers and coasts.

The World Bank predicts demand for wood products will rise by 4% every year for the next 30-40 years. A senior forestry industry representative told the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Forestry & Tree Planting last year “…there just isn’t enough wood, not just here, but in the world – and it’s getting worse……We must increase UK timber production over the coming decades…..So I want to see the UK put on its big boy pants and take responsibility for growing more of its own wood….” This is the same bullying, self-interested, narrow minded contempt we in local communities also face.

On 16/02/22 a Forestry Commission England spokesperson told an iNews journalist to read ‘a blog post in which it says it operates a “robust regulatory framework” to prevent “the establishment of monoculture plantations”. It admitted more woodland will be needed to satisfy society’s demand for timber but stressed that all trees will be “planted in the right place and for the right reasons”. This implies Scotland and other countries are used for invasive, non-native monoculture forestry to feed England’s insatiable demand for timber and enable them to continue avoiding their responsibility for stamping the second largest deforestation footprint on Planet Earth while simultaneously protecting their own natural assets.