Day 073 - 13 Jan 95 - Page 07
1 absolutely nothing for them to eat, there are no root
2 bulbs, roots or bulbs for the badgers, there is no forage
3 for the deer. There are no small mammals for the foxes;
4 they trot through it sometimes but they never stop; it is
5 of no interest to these mammals.
6
7 Q. Can you just elaborate a little bit on the management of
8 the Devon forests which you are solely responsible for?
9 A. Yes.
10
11 Q. Just describe the nuts and bolts of that in terms of
12 management relevant to this case; in other words, the
13 environmental effects of management that you do in that
14 forest?
15 A. Right, well, there are two parts to the woodland.
16 Though they are continuous, they actually lie next to each
17 other and have been of the same ownership, as far as
18 I know, for least 100 years or maybe 150 years. They do
19 actually have slightly different characters from their
20 previous management regime.
21
22 One part, which I call "the clift" or is called "the
23 clift", basically, our management there is to do nothing
24 because we really want to experiment and build up things
25 like dead wood, dying trees, see what happens, see how
26 parts which had been cleared before for -- some was cleared
27 for growing peas for pheasants; see how that comes back
28 after a period.
29
30 That is the kind of part we are running. I say "we", this
31 is myself, my partner and my companion. That we run purely
32 for biodiversity, for nature conservation reasons.
33
34 In the other part we call the "clift", which I am trying to
35 run for a commercially viable crop of oak, which I hope I
36 will have in about a 100 years' time, or my children will
37 have in a 100 years' time, the management there, we are
38 trying to do very gently. We are thinning out the oak. We
39 are taking a lot of birch out, which is a natural part of
40 the woodland. But we actually have to take the birch out
41 to let the oak grow on and not have competition, and in
42 this one we actually -- we are going to be logging by horse
43 rather than by machine, so we do the least amount of
44 disturbance to the ground flora and the ground habitat. It
45 is actually quite common now -- it is getting common in
46 this country -- for people who have forests to log by
47 horse; there is about a 100 people doing the operation in
48 this country.
49
50 Q. What is the flora like, fauna/flora like in the forest you
51 have been managing? How long have you been managing that
52 forest in Devon?
53 A. That is coming up to about a year and three-quarters
54 now, actually two years.
55
56 Q. When you took it over was it semi-natural?
57 A. When I took it over it was semi-natural, yes.
58
59 Q. So what is the flora/fauna like in that?
60 A. It is very diverse. As well as the oak, we have
