Oak Trees

In britain our oak trees are under attack from many angles, not only for commercial reasons but even from so called conservationists and even the EEC. The EEC has declared that the english oak should no longer be grown as it does not grow straight and therefore does not have a lot of commercial value, which just about sums up the attitude of the EEC to only be able to see any worth in anything if it has a commercial value. The British government has a scheme whereby it offers farmers about £3000 for every oak tree they cut down. It is roughly estimated that about 150 oak trees are being lost every day in britain, in fact we are losing trees at a far greater rate in percentage terms than are being lost in south america.

Oak is now being seen as a more or less disposable resource. It is being used, for example, by councils as posts to stop people parking their cars on verges; to fell oak trees just to protect a piece of grass is absolutly outrageous. The worst exaple i have seen myself lately is at the edge of thorny island in Hampshire, England where a bridge had been built just to go over a little stream using what i estimate to be about 50 oak trees. This bridge is poked into the mud so ineveratably it will only rot away sacrificing precious oak trees for nothing when a concerete bridge woud have surficed. Believe it or not the building of this bridge was sponsored by several conservation bodies, if you have the time visit this bridge read the plaque on it and write to the conservation bodies on the plaque and give them a piece of your mind. Also E-mail me and tell me what you told them, or ask me for directions. There is a company called oak and woodland and unfortunatly they are just an example of many like them who are involved in building houses out of oak trees. Can you imagne just how many oak trees go into building a house. This is just the sort of thing that is going to destroy what is left of our oak trees. If you know of this company and any others like it then write to them and let them know what you think of them, also inform me of them at my e-mail address.

The latest and most popular way to willfully destroy oak trees in archeological programs. Oaks are felled by the hundreds for these, all to test a bronze age axe or to make a stupid treubsay (medieval catapult). Time team regularly revals in enviting people onto the programme to destroy a oak tree and ther worst case was to dig up an anciant oak momument for what reason who knowe the monument was wood henge, and after this act of vandalism they got some oak from gues where a nature reserve which is totally consistant with conservationists most of whom absolutly hate oak trees. anyway thay made a brand new wood henge from the trees pointlsly felled.

Oak trees are a keystone species and are extreemly important to Britains ecosytsem, in some places oak trees would be supporting up to 300 different life forms.

Thanks to protestors in windsor great park many of the oak trees have been saved. The duke of Edinburgh who has allready been responsible for the masicure of hundreds of oak trees allready apparantly wanted to wipe out the rest, why dosen't he go back to denmark whe the shape shifters belong. of hundreds Author: Stephen Rowe Email: stephen.rowe@mailcity.com

Some interesting facts about trees in both Britain and South America.

The average amount of timber in tons removed for the timber industry in South America annually is 352800000 tons, compared to an average of 720000 tons of hardwood per year in Britain. That’s over 99% more timber extraction than Britain. However consider this Britain has 550000 hectares of semi-natural woodland, of which 31700 is classified as ancient woodland correlating to 1.25% of British land. South America has 870594000 hectares of forest remaining of which 69.1% is natural forest. In total South America has over 99% more forest than Britain which is what you would expect, as South America is obviously a much greater area. However consider this, if south America were to fell 1% of all there trees and Britain felled exactly the same quantity, South America would still have over 98% more forest than Britain, in fact Britain based on this comparison, would technically have no forest left.

The 1.25% of land that is still native forest correlates to 6% natural forest remaining which, doesn’t compare to South America having nearly 70% of there native forest still remaining.

The amounts of trees felled in South America is absolutely horrendous, and in no way are these facts and figures designed to condone this ecological destruction. However if you start to compare the facts and figures, you will soon begin to realise that Britain is already in a far worse position than South America and that we are loosing our trees at a proportionately greater rate.

It is far easier to protest about something many thousands miles away and ignore what is happening on your own doorstep, like so many so-called professional conservationists do. Ordinary people and those that bravely occupying trees, often do the only saving of many of our loved trees here at home. The conservationists are very often condoning tree removal English nature and the National Trust are continually cutting down oak trees, and then claiming it is good for the environment.

The most persecuted tree in Britain has to be the poor old English Oak and the other varieties of Oaks including naturalised Oaks. To a lot of English people the Oak is a much-revered symbol of England, and yet to some it is a subject of hate that should be removed. Ecologically the Oak is an extremely important species, and is classed as a keystone species; in fact it is Britons top plant keystone species. A mature Oak will support up to 300 different species, all of which would not survive without it. Perhaps you have heard about Oak being a renewable resource and careful management and forest stewardship. Well if Oak is renewable why don’t those who believe this, plant a field of Oak and wait for the trees to grow before they use it. As for stewardship and careful forest management all this means is cutting down trees and replacing them with saplings and leaving a few token trees. Saplings are no substitute for the niches created by mature trees.

We cannot afford to loose what remains of our natural heritage. To the Celts who were some of the first settlers of Britain and from where the word Britain originates worshiped Oak trees. To them the Oak was the most sacred of all trees the prefix ‘dru’ in druid means Oak, and many of there ceremonies were conducted in sacred Oak groves. So Oaks have a cultural historical significance.

Using up Oak in the quickest way as possible has now become trendy. Whether it is for some garden furniture to rot away or for pointless historical machine re-creations on television. That will just disposed off at the end of the programme. One of the most frightening things happening at the moment is construction of Oak houses, by companies such as Oak and woodland (why you would call company woodland when your business is destroying woodland?). Yes whole houses and barns etc, are being built in Oak. Can you imagine how much oak this uses up? Some people actually spend their own free time unpaid to build new recreations of an old barn, from solid Oak. Can anybody figure out why no one seems to object to this, and yet finds it unacceptable to use for example Mahogany, which is in much grater supply and much less endangered than the English Oak. A whole Oak tree will be used for each beam in the house or barn, which is horrifying, and yet you would get several beams out of a Mahogany tree, so why is this acceptable for Oak trees. The building of the Globe Theatre in London might seem a great historical idea, however it was done at the expense of our natural heritage, for example how many insects’ rare bird and bats will have died for this theatre. It was also done without consideration of our Celtic heritage which goes back a lot further than a lot of Shakespeare’s plays about post Norman times. To add insult to injury it could just have easily been built in spruce. We can always build something however if we loose our natural heritage we just can’t build it again. The Celts did not venerate oaks without reason.

References Gillam.S: Henderson.A. Etal. Economic and Statistics unit of the Forestry Commission in association with the forestry advisory Commission Panel sub committee on supply and demand. 29th August 2002.
Laura Del Giudice. Afforistation in Britain: Environmental Policy Implementation: International Field Camp; March 2002.
Regions at a Glance South America: World Resources 1998-1999;http://www.wri.org/wr-98-99/pdf/wr98same.pdf
Ross Anne: The everyday life of the Pagan Celts. 1977.