TIMBER! Tells a Story

On a rare dry Dartmoor day, the Timber! celebration took place, once again, at Pullabrook Wood in the Bovey Valley. As before, it was hosted by the Woodland Trust and Natural England but, this year, recent storms and floods have left the woods feeling a bit damp, though a healthy turn out of visitors got together to enjoy and learn about the conservation management of the Bovey Valley Woods. Restoration of plantation woodlands is a complicated process and this special event, threw a bit of light on it, giving people an experience of the various stages of the process. A demonstration of conservation felling started to provide an answer to the frequently asked question “Why do we cut down trees?” Barry’s forest of umbrellas - felling allows sunlight to penetrate and other plants will growForesters and conservationists call it Continuous Cover Forestry, when the local native wild plants are encouraged to recolonise the soil under the introduced timber trees. On site and on hand to answer more questions was Barry, one of the felling team. Using an ingenious forest of umbrellas to demonstrate the theory of removing a few trees at a time, he revealed how the increase in sunlight would empower the indigenous woodland to regenerate. To show this in action, Barry’s colleague Sam felled a large Douglas fir, demonstrating how to safely bring a tonne of timber to the ground in one piece.