FORESTRY IN ENGLAND

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 257, 25 July 1921, Page 5

FORESTRY IN ENGLAND

AN AMBITIOUS PROGRAMME.

Two million acres of Great Britain are, in course of time, to be planted with trees and converted into forest. Already n beginning has besn made, and at Butley, in Suffolk, 2500 acres of barren land, ’bought a year or two ago by the Forestry Commissioners, are now being planted. A thousand acres have already been covered, and very soon there will be 2,600,000 seedling conifers planted on this site. , In the two counties of Norfolk andi Suffolk alone there are at least a hundred thousand acres of land useless for any other purpose where large timber trees could be gr&wn, and the aim of tho Forestry Commission is eventually to convert 2,000,000 acres into forest. The Government is seriously supporting the Commission, and has made a grant of .£3,500,000 on the understanding that by tho end of 1930 at least 20,000 acres shall have been planted. Inspectors appointod by the commission ar® arranging in every county for grants to he paid to landowners who will replant the woods which were destroyed to provide timber during the war. The programme is an ambitious one, nnd will take half a century to complete, but a splendid start has be?n made, and there is no reason why, in fifty years or so, Great Britain should not be supplying most of its own timber needs.