FORESTS IN ENGLAND

Taranaki Daily News, 29 May 1933, Page 12

FORESTS IN ENGLAND

PLANTING OF 25,000 ACRES PROVISION FO RFUTURE. SOURCE OF NEW WEALTH. The planting by the British Forestry Commission of a great forest, such as William the conqueror made in the glades of Hampshires 850 years ago, is being enacted now on the loneliest heaths of East Anglia. Already the new-born woods of Thetford Chase, greater that the New Forest itself, says a Morning Post correspondent, are covering the gentle hills and plains along the Little Oouse with a blue-green haze to the farthest horizon. Within 40 years this brown “breckland” of the Norfolk and Suffolk borders in which farming is possible only in tiny patches because of the barrenness of soil, will become beautiful with forests, its roads lined with laburnum, cherry, crab-apple and wild roses. But the strange wildness that was “breckland” will pass for ever. Thetford. Chase, like the lesser forests that are rising, will be more than a picnic spot. It will be a source of national wealth, a means of defence in future wars, and the new home of a vanished breed of Englishmen —the true woodman. At Thetford miners and farm-labourers who might otherwise be unemployed are learning to tend seedling oaks. Scattered through the forest there are already 165 cottages for woodmen and their families, each with its lands attached. RECENT WINTER PLANTING. Outside the forest sawmills, papermills, and timber industries will spring up to deal with the products and needs of the forest, when every tree cut down is replaced by more, and trees of every age flourish and supply-timber. The winter planting of 1600 additional acres has recently been completed, but it is possible for a novice to stand in the middle of a million pines and notice nothing but the lank brown grass. As summer waxes the pines will shoot up, but the bracken, overtopping them with ease, will be cut down by the woodmen. Ten years hence the pines will be so tall that the bracken , will perish in their shadow. In some places there are forest nurseries ‘ covering 120 acres to serve the needs of the 25,000 acres of planted forest Of acorns, a large quantity was collected last autumn by the wives and children of the woodmen, and now the planting is beginning. After two years in a nursery the young oaks will be transplanted to the forest lands. There is a perpetual fight against the “natural enemies” of the acorn. Everything from green fly to cockchafers, from mice to roe deer, attempts to devour the young fofest, so the foresters soak all their pine seed in red lead before planting' it, to give it an unattractive taste, and then build tiny fences round to keep the mice even from the taste. GUARDING AGAINST RABBITS. Cockchafers make their tunnels underground, and trenches are sunk to thwart them. Rabbits are even more of a pest, but it is the boast of the 14 whole-time “warreners” of the forest that there is t not a rabbit in all the 25,000 planted acres. When new land is planted it is first fenced so that the rabbit is excluded. Those inside the fence are exterminated. v Protection from the deer is also provided.. Finally, there is the danger from fire. The smouldering cigarette or match carelessly thrown away,'the wayside fire not properly put out, the pipe-ash knocked out on a pole, may destroy and endanger the lives Of scores of workers in the streets. Only a few weeks ago 150 acres were burned' in that way at Thetford. Fortunately, much was saved by the work of half the woodmen. A tractor ploughed furrows round the fire and was nearly destroyed in the process.