Bishop Hill National Trust wants to clearcut North American forests
Mar 23, 2015 Climate: WG2 Energy: biomass Greens Dame Helen Ghosh, the former Whitehall bureaucrat who now runs the National Trust, was on the Today programme this morning explaining why climate change is the biggest threat to the Trust's work.
Pressed to explain herself, Dame Helen had almost nothing to justify her position, apart from a suggestion that the Trust likes to address the issues of the day. This came across to me as saying "we just jump on any passing bandwagon, it's good for business".
She did mumble something about declines in house sparrow and hedgehog populations. Unfortunately for this case, the fall in sparrow numbers appears to be due to changes in farming practices, to cats, and to pesticides, and in hedgehog numbers because of habitat loss. Dame Helen is therefore engaging in some pretty misleading scaremongering on the climate front.
When pressed on whether people should stop burning fossil fuels she again waffled, before saying that the Trust was going to be getting most of its energy from renewables. Interestingly, she didn't mention windfarms, no doubt because she might have been hammered on the "desecration of the uplands" front (although on the BBC she would presumably have been safe enough). Instead she spoke of hydro schemes and biomass boilers.
Given that wood pellets are being imported from North American forests that are clearcut for the purpose, this does seem quite a strange policy for the National Trust to adopt. Is this really what the National Trust wants to see happening?
Reader Comments (59)
What kind of trees are being turned in to ground unicorn horn? If it's pine then thats a problem as pines makes the land around them uninhabitable plus they take, what, around 7 years to mature.
Also, it seems to me using wood for commercial power stations is something new so the wood being used now can't have been planted nearly a decade ago purposely because the demand didn't exist then?
Mailman
I've read that Scandinavian woodchips are used in a Canadian biomass electric power plant because only two sources of pellets met the specifications; the other wasn't in Canada, either.
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The house sparrow decline was undoubtedly down to the home improvement grants of the 1980's. All those broken soffits and facias replaced in all the cities.
Just cancelled by NT membership; I wish I could do the same with my BBC licence fee
David Schofield
Definitely something more to the sparrow decline than the (modest) loss of suburban nest sites you point out. Actually, decline was greatest in rural areas, which might point to the increase in raptors and corvids, or to the general tidyiing-up of fields and farmyards, but I'm not convinced. You'll find people going round saying things like 'habitat loss' whenever we note an increasing scarcity of something, but that rarely is a proper answer for very widespread (in this case worldwide) species. I've not yet seen any explanation that satisfies me. In my part of the country there was a quite rapid decline through the 90s, when sparrows completely disappeared from some localities, but I am pleased to say that they have gradually re-colonised pretty much all the areas from which they disappeared. Some untracked disease seems possible. I recall a well-regarded birder once telling me 'sparrow numbers go in 100-yr cycles'. Interestingly, they are communal birds, which seem more vulnerable to large fluctuations than solitary species (cf. passenger pigeon?)
Contradiction of the fossil fuel disinvestment - Green/left calls for it
whilst at the same time provoking policies in the NT and BBC which cause us to disinvest from them ansd sto[ being members.
It would not surprise me if the trustees are actually breaking the terms of the legacies in that they are behaving in a way which does not achieve the maximum benefit for mans appreciation of nature and history.
(.. Note the way the law applies to company directors re tax efficiency ..They are not free to make political "feel good" decisions but rather are obliged to maximise shareholder returns whist obeying the law.
It is up to the government to set the laws to the benefit of humanity.)
- I think that it is a pity that once a charity or political party is hijacked by loony activists that we let them get away with it. Rather we should stay and wrestle them out.
Gecko, you are spouting nonsense. Either that, or you have swallowed the Drax propaganda. Enviva, Drax's main supplier, IS cutting down great swathes of majestic bottomland forest. I have seen this happening on the ground and the air. You owe me an apology.
cats are an environmental hasard of the same size as Caroline Lucas
Unfortunately they are a sort of tamagoshis for wimmin who havent spawned young yet, too ugly or whatevah.
So we persist in having a sadistic predator of birds in our ecological system that distorts the whole balance.
There's now a transcript of Monday's interview with Helen Ghosh, here:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/2015/20150323_r4