Destruction of woodland at 'Old Man's Corner'
 Unfortunately, the spirit of well-being created in our September
'97 Liaison Meeting was abruptly shattered when, on
October 10th, I visited Studland to get a bit of sunbathing in. Although chilly,
it was a gloriously sunny day.
Chainsaws heard in broadleaf woodland
Attracted by the unmistakable sound of a
chainsaw, I went to the area of broadleaf woodland towards the Shell Bay end of
our area. There I found three workmen engaged in tree felling. They said they
were contractors to English Nature and that they were cutting an access path
from the deep-water sump on the landward side of the woodland so that hose lines
could be brought through in the event of fire on the seaward side, where there
is no fresh water source.
A two to three metre dog-legged path had been agreed - a fifty
metre wide corridor of destruction was what we got!
As we had discussed this at the meeting on 17th September, when the National
Trust had stated unequivocally that such paths - two were planned - would be no
wider than two to three metres, and as the contractors also asserted this to be
the case (they said the path would be dog-legged through the wood, and showed me
markings on the trees which appeared to support this position) I though no more
about it, and returned to my sunbathing. You can imagine my horror when I
discovered on the following Monday that a huge area, thirty to fifty yards wide
and the better part of a hundred yards deep, had been totally denuded of trees,
the remains of which were left lying on site. There was even less access to the
deep-water sump than there had been before!
I
immediately fired off a very strong letter to Celia Mead, accusing the
National Trust
of a serious breach of faith, which elicited a reply which might be described as
apologetic. Ms Mead asserted that the work had been arranged by English Nature
prior to our September meeting and that her understanding was that two woodland
rides had been created. (By this time, another huge area had been levelled by
the second deep-water sump closer to Shell Bay. In fact, if access to this
second sump was all that was required, there was no need to cut down any trees,
since there was already a path through the wood at that point which required
only the clearance of fallen timber and scrub.)
According to my Concise
Oxford,
a ride, in this context, is "a path (esp. through woods) for riding
on". These clearings are wide enough to accommodate a squadron of cavalry
in review order, but as they are heavily waterlogged and extensively covered by
gnarled and twisted root systems, no self-respecting - or, more to the point,
horse-respecting - rider would even consider entering them. What is self-evident
is that in these two clearings, the screening effect of the woodland has been
largely nullified. How this matches up with the National Trust's promises is difficult to
see.
Colin James
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