THE PASSION FOR CONIFERS [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Lovers of the Lake District who are opposed to the activities of the Forestry Commission in that region have not infrequently been told that they are judging the Commission by the evil deeds of its youth and that it has since reformed and can be trusted not to spoil the landscape. But the latest news from the valley of the Duddon will confirm the belief of those who contend that no degree of goodwill and no reform in the taste of the Commissioners will enable them to
reconcile commercial timber production with the preservation of the Lake District.
In answer to a question asked by Sir Waldron Smithers in the House of Commons on February 22nd, Sir George Courthope gave the facts about the plantations of the Forestry Commission in the Duddon Valley. He said that " the Forestry Commission have planted up to the present time on their Hardknott estate i86,000 trees of which 167,000 are coniferous and 19,000 broad-leaved species." That is the best they have been able to do in their most recent work on an estate where we know they have tried to plant broad-leaved trees as far as was compatible with the purposes of timber production. It means, as we have always maintained, that timber production in the Lake District necessarily involves the creation of those dark coniferous masses which are fatal to its beauty and alien to its character.
Surely the time has come for the Commissioners to recognise this fact and not only to cease planting on the Hardknott estate but to make a generous response to the appeals made to them so often and from so many quarters, but especially to that made last December by the Bishops of Carlisle, Durham, Blackburn, Liverpool, Bristol, Peterborough, Southwark, in their joint letter to The Times, to add at least Eskdale and the Vale of Duddon, the greater part of the Vale of Coniston and the immediate environs of Ennerdale Water to the area reserved from afforestation.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
A. R. WOOLLEY,
Headmaster, Wellingborough Grammar School. The Elms, Hatton Park, Wellingborough.
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