Is it me or is there an awful lot of felling going on at the moment

I know cwmcarn has disease problems

but my local trails at Woburn have been cleared to an extent ive never seen before.

I know forests are a commercial resource, it just seems that ever more great trails are being ruined these days

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/07/national-forest-woodland-midlands-regeneration

whinge over

Disease yes but also a lot of the crop is reaching maturity.
With forestry/NRW under financial pressure I wonder if that plays into it too?

I wouldn’t worry though, the trails tend to get re-established afterwards.

I wouldn’t worry though, the trails tend to get re-established afterwards.

^This – and new ones get created too.

Much of our commercial forestry was planted during/after the war. As such, it is all reaching maturity around the same time, hence the current spike in felling. In areas like Argyll, new forest roads and temporary piers have been built to help relieve the pressure of timber lorries on the road network.

I wish someone would re-establish the fire road up Cwm Big in Ebbw Vale. It’s covered in sticks.

Seem quite a bit of feeling up north here as well but as mentioned it’s reaching maturity so time to go.

On the other hand this was on the forestry Facebook page the other day

“On Sunday I asked how many trees you thourght we planted this year. In Hamsterley this year we will have planted:
7000 Silver Birch
1500 Sessile Oak
1000 Hazel
500 Sweet Chestnut
100 Small Leaved Lime
Total Broadleaves = 10,100
6000 Scots Pine
5000 Sitka Spruce
5000 Western Red Cedar
4000 Douglas Fir
Total Conifers = 20,000
Total trees planted in Hamsterley Forest = 30,100
This is a combination of restocking newly felled site such as Windy Bank (the one you can see from the car park) and beating up (replacement of dead trees) on older sites across the forest, the breakdown is: 16,100 restock and 14,000 beat up.
And yes, it was very hard work!”

And that isn’t a particularly big area – a quick search would indicate between 1000 & 2500 trees per hectare. So an area of between 12 and 30 hectares (a hectare is 100m x 100m).

Them there woods have a hell of a lot of trees.

Good to see broad leaf going in though. Usually means they are spaced further apart so come a few years down the line once they are more established there’ll be more room for new trails with big corners instead of zig zagging your way through conifers spaced 6ft apart. 🙂

I was out at the weekend and somebody had driven a dirty great forestry vehicle right across the trail.

Doesn’t really bother me to be honest; it’s a working forest. But it makes me laugh when people talk about mountain bikes ruining the trails. If you ride on FC land then sooner or later they’ll drive right across your trail. If you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky they’ll drive right along it.

You need to build that into a nice gap jump then. Its got a great downhill landing before that nice moist sketchy left hand corner 🙂

Oooh! Hicks Lodge in the news – well the Gruaniad at least.

No mention of the plucky band of FC volunteers though. 👿 Or the fantastic family friendly bike trails. Or the fantastic café.

In recent years its made the Forest Of Dean way better with the felling.