RSPB accused of damaging British environment in bid to save birds

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/13/rspb-uk-charity-deforestation-birds

RSPB accused of damaging British environment in bid to save birds

Charity accused of damaging the environment as it takes the axe to hundreds of acres of conifer woodland to restore traditional open heaths. Opponents say the scheme threatens UK's fight against global warming

David Adam, environment correspondent
The Observer, Sunday 13 September 2009

It is an all-too familiar scene of environmental destruction. Deep in a forest, heavy machinery has felled a giant swath of trees to leave bare scrubland and a handful of stumps as forlorn memorials. The timber has long gone and cattle now pick their way across the clearing.

But the scene of this environmental vandalism is not Indonesia or the Amazon; it is affluent Surrey. And those responsible are not illegal loggers, but one of Britain's largest and most influential conservation groups. If it has its way, a forest near you could be next for the chop.

"Scots pine, Corsican pine, Japanese larch. There are clues in the names. These trees are not native to southern England," says Mike Coates, a project manager with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

In a controversial move, the RSPB has set its sights on England's non-native woodlands, which it wants to demolish to find space to restore a different type of English habitat, the open and rugged heathland immortalised in the novels of Thomas Hardy. Dominated by heather and scrubby plants, such heathland is an increasingly rare sight in England, and so is the wildlife that relies upon it.

…