The Little Fellers of Fingle Woods

If you are walking in Fingle Woods this winter, you will possibly see some safety signs that warn of forestry work in progress. You may hear the growl of chainsaws or the rumbling of machinery along wet muddy tracks. This is something we have all become familiar with over the last few winter seasons while the year-on-year programme of ‘harvesting’ the conifer trees continues. Thinning and extracting these conifer species is the core task in the woodland restoration process. Felling a proportion of softwood timber gives the native broadleaf species the space to recolonise the ancient woodland soil but, this year, something has changed.

He continued to describe how it might be necessary to bring back the larger operators in the future saying, “In order to keep pace with the growth rate of the forest, we need to remove 2000 tonnes of timber each year and, while the conifers are growing so fast, we are not achieving that volume but it has to be balanced with the need to thin 200 hectares of this relatively young crop on steep slopes. As the growth yields will remain high, we may need to review this in the future. It’s a case of taking the right option for each situation.”by Matt Parkins