A FORMER Government minister has claimed his dream of of seeing 500 million native trees planted across Britain was shattered jointly by civil servants and by environmental organisations.
Rory Stewart who was Forestry Minister in David Cameron's administration makes the surprise revelation in his book, Politics on The Edge - A Memoir From Within.
He writes: "I had great hopes of direct impact in my role as minister.
"The UK has only half the forest cover of most comparable European countries, and our forestry was dominated by sitka spruce, a tree originally from Alaska planted in dark straight edged blocks across upland Britain in a way which damaged precious peatland and supported very little in way of wildlife
"I had long dreamed of planting 500 million native trees in Britain, from oaks to hawthorn, spread thinly and evenly across whole country, creating a more mixed traditional landscape.
"A single oak could host 1000 separate species. And I felt it would be beautiful."
Working through the details, he calculated that his scheme would result in 25 trees per hectare across the UK.
"A young oak sapling could cost less than 20p, and a single person working steadily could plant over 1000 a day with a simple turns of a spade.
"Even with protective tubing and staking the total cost was about £1 a tree."
He continues: "Since we were handing out over £3 billion a year in single farm subsidy payments to farmers, I suggested that the subsidy payments should be conditional on farmers planting five native trees for every hectare of their land every year for five years.
"They could choose any native tree - even birch or field maple or cherry or hazel or willow.
"They could group them in orchards or along stream banks or plant them as standard trees along hedges and fence lines
"The result would be half a billion extra trees at minimal cost
"And we would have created something of staggering beauty and environmental value."
What could possibly go wrong with such a notable aspiration? Stewart's small team of civil servants who specialised in trees was evidently unimpressed.
He states: "They suggested my idea was probably logistically impossible, or even illegal, and certainly unacceptable to the National Farmers' Union."
But to the minister's surprise, the strongest opposition came not from the NFU "which seemed reasonably relaxed "but from the environmental NGOs who told him they "would not trust farmers which trees to plant and where".
When he tried to argue that such micro management would make the entire project unaffordable, he says "they shrugged and refused countenance a compromise".
Any hopes that Stewart might have had of pursuing the project were "derailed", he says, when Cameron's decision to hold a referendum on membership of the EU put a raft of across-Whitehall policies on the back burner.
* Politics on The Edge is published by Jonathan Cape.
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