Maybe the UK should plant more....

[Stere]

Think i read somewhere nitens is only recommeded for south or coastal  due to frost tolerance although there probably some alternative euc species  better suited to up north?

 

Tempted to try a half dozen to replace some ash that has ADB....just as novelty to observe thoose mutant growth rates

 

 

 

 

[Rough Hewn]

 
Ok, land ownership issues aside, here are the issues with broadleaf production in this country:
 

• Grey squirrels. They completely decimate crops, require expensive and often unpopular control measures
• Much more expensive to establish. More waste (tubes and stakes) compared to conifer.
• Growth rates are extremely slow
• Mostly cannot be mechanically harvested, so expensive and dangerous to convert from standing trees to usable milling material
• Horrendously inconsistent quality. Shake, rot and staining is a far more prevalent issue in hardwood
• Extremely limited market. How much hardwood is actually used on a day to day basis? 
• Broadleaf production is of a much higher quality on the continent, without the issues of squirrels or having to constantly intervene with pruning, respacing, thinning in order to have a chance at a good tree. Can usually be mechanically harvested at a younger age. I visited a hardwood sawmill near my uncle's in Germany 7-8 years ago and they were able to sell kiln dried beech of excellent quality for a lower price than I could produce fresh sawn here.
• The fuelwood has a limited market as mostly unsuitable for chip production. Log production contributes to what is a largely polluting form of home heating (considering the fact that most customers don't know how to use stoves correctly, or have open fires).

 
On the flipside, consider the benefits of conifer (leaving eucalyptus aside for a moment):
 

• Grows consistently and quickly
• Grows on sites where broadleaf production would be impossible (thinking of moorland)
• Mechanically harvestable at all stages, reducing costs by 1/2 - 2/3 and improving safety
• Much broader application possibilities. Construction, fencing, cladding, pallets, paper, tetra packs, furniture, fuelwood etc
• Biodiversity in mature stands (especially douglas and larch) equal to or exceeding equivilent age broadleaf. 
• On a personal note, a mature conifer stand is something I find to be far more pleasant than a broadleaf woodland. Give me 120ft douglas and an understory any day.

 
I can go on if you want [emoji3]

All you mention here is the economics.
That’s way too easy.
Serving existing markets for cheap low grade timber.
Changing the mind set, to change the end user/recipients choice.
That’s the key.
One day we will have IKEA offering hand made uk wood products.
[emoji6][emoji106]

[Big J]

5 minutes ago, Rough Hewn said:

All you mention here is the economics.
That’s way too easy.
Serving existing markets for cheap low grade timber.
Changing the mind set, to change the end user/recipients choice.
That’s the key.
One day we will have IKEA offering hand made uk wood products.

 

The UK market will never change towards longer term forestry. Britain's defining characteristic is short-termism. Look at industry in general, even the way people treat jobs as 'CV builders' only doing 18-24 months in one position.

 

Fundamentally, we don't grow good hardwoods here. Historically, perhaps we did, but that was when labour was incredibly cheap and land prices were much lower. An economic return on investment on hardwoods is virtually impossible, and certainly within the lifetime of the person planting it. It's all well and good talking about going back to a time of handmade goods, bespoke joinery and 150 year broadleaf forestry cycles but very few people are willing to sign up to that. 

 

Look at it this way. If you plant a 10 acre eucalyptus nitens plantation down here, in 10 years, you have a mature woodland of 25m plus trees, which you can enjoy as an amenity (and people do enjoy it - I've been canvassing the locals who walk the plantation I visit) and from which you can draw an ecomomic return. It's miles better than an arable field in terms of biodiversity and it provides an attractive landscape feature, as well as flood mitigation. 

 

If you were to plant a native broadleaf plantation, at 10 years you'd have a field of scrubby little 4-6m trees, no canopy cover andlong grass/brambles/bracken. You'd be starting out at the beginning of 30 years of grey squirrel control, you'd have pruning and later high pruning to undertake, tree tubes to remove and dispose of and absolutely no amenity value. You'd be committing yourself to years of work without every hoping to see a return from it. And you could be in a position (as so many are now) of putting all that work in only for it to be wiped out by something like ash dieback. 

 

Like it or not, long term forestry is a very tough proposition to sell. Trust me - part of my work is persuading landowners to plant new woodland. No one is interested because it doesn't make financial sense. Even shorter rotation crops are still a long term investment. 

 

The UK has limited space and should focus on what it is good at, which is growing timber very quickly. We can leave the higher quality timber production to the Europeans, who have a tradition of it, vastly more space to do it and for whom the trees grow perfectly with minimal intervention.

[Rough Hewn]

 
The UK market will never change towards longer term forestry. Britain's defining characteristic is short-termism. Look at industry in general, even the way people treat jobs as 'CV builders' only doing 18-24 months in one position.
 
Fundamentally, we don't grow good hardwoods here. Historically, perhaps we did, but that was when labour was incredibly cheap and land prices were much lower. An economic return on investment on hardwoods is virtually impossible, and certainly within the lifetime of the person planting it. It's all well and good talking about going back to a time of handmade goods, bespoke joinery and 150 year broadleaf forestry cycles but very few people are willing to sign up to that. 
 
Look at it this way. If you plant a 10 acre eucalyptus nitens plantation down here, in 10 years, you have a mature woodland of 25m plus trees, which you can enjoy as an amenity (and people do enjoy it - I've been canvassing the locals who walk the plantation I visit) and from which you can draw an ecomomic return. It's miles better than an arable field in terms of biodiversity and it provides an attractive landscape feature, as well as flood mitigation. 
 
If you were to plant a native broadleaf plantation, at 10 years you'd have a field of scrubby little 4-6m trees, no canopy cover andlong grass/brambles/bracken. You'd be starting out at the beginning of 30 years of grey squirrel control, you'd have pruning and later high pruning to undertake, tree tubes to remove and dispose of and absolutely no amenity value. You'd be committing yourself to years of work without every hoping to see a return from it. And you could be in a position (as so many are now) of putting all that work in only for it to be wiped out by something like ash dieback. 
 
Like it or not, long term forestry is a very tough proposition to sell. Trust me - part of my work is persuading landowners to plant new woodland. No one is interested because it doesn't make financial sense. Even shorter rotation crops are still a long term investment. 
 
The UK has limited space and should focus on what it is good at, which is growing timber very quickly. We can leave the higher quality timber production to the Europeans, who have a tradition of it, vastly more space to do it and for whom the trees grow perfectly with minimal intervention.

Again.
All you are saying is it’s about the economics.
Well there are ways and means to change that.
With the right government legislation, grants, funding and foresight.
Changing public awareness about their role as users of products.
There are a great many in this country who care deeply about our forests and trees.
It’ll take a long time and vast effort.
But it could be done...
[emoji106]

[Big J]

3 minutes ago, Rough Hewn said:

Again.
All you are saying is it’s about the economics.
Well there are ways and means to change that.
With the right government legislation, grants, funding and foresight.
Changing public awareness about their role as users of products.
There are a great many in this country who care deeply about our forests and trees.
It’ll take a long time and vast effort.
But it could be done...

 

It won't be done though.

 

Firstly, the UK is not a forestry nation. There is no recent history of growing decent quality hardwoods in anything other than trivial quantities. Keep in mind that our woodland cover hit it's all time low in 1919 at 5%, which in hardwood forestry terms is less than one cycle. 

 

Secondly, relying exclusively on government funding to make a project economically viable is something I personally feel uncomfortable about. 

 

As regards people caring deeply about forests, I'd counter that there are a great many people that don't understand forestry in this country. I came across a page on Facebook that had been set up to protest any and all forestry work in a woodland local to Scarborough. The woodland is managed by the Woodland Trust, and the author of the page was complaining about ancient woodland restoration (ie, the felling of conifers) and even tried to make a case for rhododendron! 

 

Another point worth considering is that harvesting is moving away from motor manual felling. A guy with a chainsaw is much more expensive (per tonne), at far greater risk of injury and ultimately the ground impact is higher on manual felling as (if you're in softwoods) the brash is spread about the site (rather than under the machine) and the forwarder has to drive further to pick up spread out products. 

 

I'm still proposing increasing the amount of broadleaf we have in the UK, but stating that it shouldn't be a focus for production and should be limited to difficult and unproductive ground.

[Khriss]

There is a lovely video of a sawmill turning Oaks into Gunboats in WW2 (  British Council)  so yr not quite right abt that, but those millers n sawyers long gone and modern plastic done away with most boats of that size. I still think we should be pursuing the Eco side for bio diversity but the cash is in the crop as in any farming.  K

[Stere]

How bout stuff like  SC coppice (could it be machine harvested?) useful product but don't think its makes much money so they are often neglected?

 

Alot of stuff softwood is used for SC would last better.

[Big J]

33 minutes ago, Stere said:

How bout stuff like  SC coppice (could it be machine harvested?) useful product but don't think its makes much money so they are often neglected?

 

Alot of stuff softwood is used for SC would last better.

Maybe, but SC isn't native either. Naturalised, but not native.

 

And still susceptible to sweet chestnut blight, phytophthora ramorum and squirrel damage.

[Stere]

Was hoping genetic engineering programs will be used  breed resitant strains of ash elm and SC unsure how realistic that is or wether its just something that needs more funding to happen.

 

They managed to make a blight restitant potato....and wheat  resitiance to mildew etc

 

[Big J]

6 minutes ago, Stere said:

Was hoping genetic engineering programs will be used  breed resitant strains of ash elm and SC unsure how realistic that is or wether its just something that needs more funding to happen.

 

They managed to make a blight restitant potato....and wheat  resitiance to mildew etc

 

All valiant and important projects, but it won't address the fact that we don't have enough standing timber to meet meet demand now, and we'll have even less in 5-10 years time as we start to see the negative affect of FC policy changing in the early 90's to promote the planting of broadleaves. So many of the restockings after conifer clearfell of the past 30 years have gone to broadleaf. That's taking productive land out of production for something that'll never make a crop.