Welcome! This blogspot gives you the chance to have your say as part of the 5 Year Review of the Sefton Coast Woodlands Forest Plan. To aid this process, please keep all discussion focused on the 5 Year Review. Any inappropriate or abusive posts will be removed.
Site moderator: admin@merseyforest.org.ukShort term objective: "To involve additional landowners in the planting of trees as appropriate."
Woodland area map (click image for large version).
Activities:
There are 32 woodland landowners who could potentially be involved in the Forest Plan. In 2003 16 were involved, and within the first five years a further four have been recruited to the Plan, taking the total to 20. This is equivalent to an extra 6.01 hectares (taking the total covered by the Forest Plan to 410 of the 420 hectares of woodland in the area).
Among the 20 landowners 5.07 hectares have been planted as new woodland.
No landowners outside of the Forest Plan agreement have undertaken any new woodland planting.
A question for you:
The purpose of this objective is to bring in new woodland to the Forest Plan to counterbalance the unavoidable loss of other parts of the woodland due to natural processes (coastal erosion). In 2003 there were 419 hectares of woodland, and now we still have 421 hectares despite some attrition. Do you agree that the measures above are the right way forward?
1 comments:
So far so good -the footprint of the woodland area has been maintained. But, for long term planning I think that the Forest Plan process should look beyond the immediate coastal area to see if there are opportunities now to establish woodland on farmland to offset predicted future losses in the coastal zone.
The planting on farmland at Altcar Rifle Range has shown that perfectly acceptable habitat for Red Squirrel can be developed away from the dune system. Why is the recent planting east of Formby Bypass and the woodland at Formby Hall not included in the equation?
It would be useful to see a 50-100 year plan which takes into consideration coastal erosion and the need to maintain an open dune system.
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