IT really comes as no surprise that the area planted in England is at such a derisory level. The first problem is available land, free from conflicting uses. Large-scale planting in England is only practicable where low land values can bring about a change of ownership from marginal agriculture to forests. This confines any notable expansion of the wooded area of England to our uplands. Sheep farming in the hills is excused from any useful or economic justification by the real (or is it perceived?) opposition to change. This is embodied in our National Parks, the Peak District, the Yorkshire Dales, the North York Moors and the Lake District, plus Northumbria. And, of course, Exmoor and Dartmoor. For reasons that obscure logic, the mindset in the parks is to keep the hills naked as nature intended, which is a false ideal. Not so long ago, much of these bare hills were forest. Exclude grazing and forest - of a sort -returns of itself in a few decades.
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