PLANS BY the British government to sell off nearly a million acres of forestry over the next decade in a bid to raise billions of pounds will not be implemented in Scotland, the Scottish government has declared.
Environment secretary Caroline Spelman is set to announce the plans to sell the lands in coming days, sparking a likely increase in commercial logging, new golf course developments and holiday parks.
The move, which has already been described by Green MP Caroline Lucas as “an unforgivable act of environmental vandalism”, is expected to provoke a furious row with Labour, but also with local communities.
One-third of the land is to be auctioned over the next four years, with the remainder to be out of State hands by 2020 under the strategic review, sources in the department for the environment, food and rural affairs have privately confirmed.
Under the plan, approximately 900,000 acres of forests managed by the forestry commission are to be sold to private owners.
Scottish environment minister Roseanna Cunningham has already rejected the Spelman move.
She described the advance speculation as “very unhelpful and totally misleading”, adding that the control of Scottish forests lay with Edinburgh not London.
In a bid to attract private buyers, the government is ready to change long-standing legislation – some of it dating back to the signing of Magna Carta in 1215 – governing the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire and Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, as well as other ancient forests, which prohibits the cutting down of trees.
Forestry worker unions are set to oppose the move.
Allan MacKenzie, the secretary of the Forestry Commission Trade Unions, said: “We will oppose any land sale.
“Once we’ve sold it, it never comes back,” he said.
The plans are expected to also be opposed by the Welsh assembly, which, like the Scottish parliament, enjoys devolved powers in the area.
