Woodland Management

It's common to hear people refer to 'management' in a tone of voice that implies it's always wholly beneficial. "What this place needs is some management". I'd like to have a ten pound note for every time I've heard that. It's to be heard about any human affairs but it's more questionable when it's about landscapes and woodland. In the woods we like 'good management' but then what's 'good'? In the case of some plantation style woods it's mostly come to be what the Forestry Commission or the Woodland Trust choose to give you grants for. Having heard about the locals' discontent with SWT's management of the planted woods at Greno Woods I stopped by to have a look at Lady Canning's Plantation at Ringinglow. There's been activity here in recent years from the Council in a Woodland Trust scheme. I've not seen the written details of that scheme so I have to judge by what I see. And 'what you see' doesn't seem to have any sort of priority at all.  If this is a good way to manage older plantations then the criteria is absolutely not having something that's good to look at. Is this fated to be the result of every centrally funded scheme?

I'm assuming that the Council received a hefty grant on condition that the work done included creating spaces between the densely planted pines because that's deemed to be good for biodiversity - allowing native species to grow alongside the crop. There are difficult considerations in old plantations like this of course and any work done will have multiple consequences among trees that have matured in unnaturally crowded situations. But what's happened here makes no concession to our sense of what looks right. Yes it's an artificial man-created environment but it's as if Capability Brown had never existed. It's industrial management that Gradgrind would have approved of. But few others, surely.

Huge forestry machinery has taken  bites out of the pine woods leaving behind channels in straight lines going off at angles. These floors of these corridors are occupied by stumps of the removed trees and every so often lumps of uprooted trees. Because the pines have grown in sheltered condition surrounded by others they have concentrated on reaching for the light in competition with others so trunks are thin and root systems barely adequate. So the extra corridors for the wind to come in have resulted in numerous falls many of them recent days.

Did nobody think of making visitor friendly informal spaces planted with oak and birch?