BRITAIN’S NEW FORESTS

Evening Star, Issue 20310, 19 October 1929, Page 4

BRITAIN’S NEW FORESTS

PROFITS FROM WASTE LANDS Great Britain is once more becoming a country of forests. The Forestry Commission has planted 275,913 acres of woodlands between 1920 and 1928, and 17,237 acres were added in the past year. It has been the policy of the commissioners to replant the old royal forests, such as Sherwood, the New Forest, Rockingham, Wyre, and High Peak—ancient names that ring like trumpet calls down the lanes of history. The greatest stretch of forest anywhere in England will be in East Anglia, where an entirely new area is being, planted. It is being started with.24,ooo.acres around Thetford, and ultimately the commissioners dream of extending this to a mighty forest of 80,000 to 100,000 acres. This would be four times the size of the New Forest, Last year the commissioners spent £648,036, and, as most of the trees planted were spruce and fir, returns will begin to come in about twenty years henct Britain draws, says tho London ‘.Daily Express,’ nine-tenths of her timber supplies from abroad, at a cost of £IOO 000,000 a year, although at the lowest estimate she has 3.000.000 waste acres suited for afforestation, but at present unplanted. In Wales the annual demand for pit-, props requires 500,000 acres .of forest to supply them. This is exactly the area or forestable waste land in the Principality.