Welsh Journals

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forest management for wildlife and facilities for people to enjoy this wildlife of the quality of that developed in Grizedale (Cumbria) where it is demonstrated that the Commission can adapt its forest when it chooses, albeit at the whims of individual conservators and foresters, without reducing its harvest yield, and moreover can make a cash profit for the forest out of its wildlife facilities. Are we, as a public, not entitled to ask why this is not done elsewhere? In two ways I believe that the Forestry Commission does itself a disservice in the judgement of conservationists: first in its growing reluctance to respect the integrity of SSSIs (witness the current confrontation with NCC in the Doethie Valley in Dyfed) and second by lack of honesty in its repeated claims of the benefits of plantations for wildlife while conveniently ignoring the losses incurred to other frequently scarcer and irreplaceable species occasioned by its new plantings. This last statement is particularly true of the uplands and clearly the vast bulk of future plantings will be on upland sites. It is difficult to believe that there is any alternative basis upon which to build an upland conservation strategy, other than notification of the important sites by the Nature Conservancy Council as SSSIs, whatever relative lack of force this system has at present: indeed the NCC has a statutory requirement upon it to notify sites which are up to the required standard. In the important Nature Conservation Review (1977) the NCC produced a definitive list of national Grade I and Grade II sites, but so far as the Welsh uplands are concerned it can already be seen to have major omissions. In September 1977 the RSPB submitted details of nine upland sites to NCC as a result of field surveys with the contention that "the retention of these sites is vital if viable populations of upland birds are to be maintained in Wales". The case was accepted by NCC but, despite repeated pressure, the NCC has so far failed to schedule any additional parts of the nine areas. Several of them are certainly of Grade I and/or Grade II status and one such was Llanbrynmair Moors in Powys (Montgomery). Subject to a massive afforestation proposal by EFG affecting the whole of the 4,000 acres or so identified by NCC as Grade I land (i.e. nationally important), the NCC objected to the Forestry Commission giving the planting grant which EFG needed to go ahead with the planting. Bitter and protracted controversy ensued and the head-on confrontation Peregrine Steve Jaremko