A vision for our forests

We set up Our Forests in 2011 not just to keep the pressure up on the Government in terms of its disastrous sell-off proposals for the Public Forest Estate, but also to create some kind of a vision as to a better way of doing it. We felt that was important right at the start in order to encourage the Independent Panel (set up by the Government to dig it out of the hole it had created for itself!) to come up with something that had a bit of real substance.

Both these purposes are still very important. The Government still needs holding to account. Unbelievably, Defra is still refusing to provide any account of the meetings it held with NGOs to discuss its sell-off proposals at the back end of 2010. We put in our Freedom of Information Requests many months ago. So what have Ministers – or indeed the NGOs – got to hide?

More importantly, we desperately need some new radical and progressive thinking about the future of England’s wood and forests. I’m very much hoping that’s what you’ll find in the Vision that we’ve launched today.

Click here for our Vision document and here for the associated Press Release.