A huge wildfire tore through the village of Ferraria de São João, in Penela, central Portugal in June last year. Exactly two months after the excavators were back.

Only this time they weren’t there to plough up the land to plant eucalyptus, as has happened to so much of the land around the village. They were there to dig the trees up.

While Portugal’s politicians squabbled over failed forestry policy in the aftermath of the fire, residents of Ferraria de São João acted quickly.

Oaks and chestnuts

They decided unanimously to create a 500 metre “Village Protection Zone”, where fire-prone plantation species like eucalyptus and pine would be uprooted, and a protective barrier of fire-resistant, native species like oaks and chestnuts would be planted instead.

Ferraria de São João was relatively lucky. An existing area of native cork oaks above the village saved many houses from the fire.

Other places suffered more extensive damage when, on the 17th June, central Portugal suffered it’s first “fire-storm”, leaving 64 people dead, injuring many more, and destroying vast areas of countryside.

Emergency services were caught by surprise – traditionally the fire season in Portugal starts in late July. This tragedy was the worst fire event in Portugal’s history, and left the nation wondering how it could possibly have happened. 

The fire was caused by a dry thunderstorm during an intense heatwave and severe drought, where temperature records were smashed throughout the country.

Out of control wildfires

It spread at great speed due to the high winds, and because of this many places could not be evacuated in time. Many people caught up in the fire had to seek refuge in basements or water tanks, and many more fought the fires themselves.

It was eventually extinguished a week later after almost 50,000 hectares had burned, affecting nine different municipalities. 

This fire set the tone for the rest of the summer. So far in 2017 almost 280,000 hectares have burned, an area six times the average for the past decade, and equivalent to around 12% of Portugal’s forested areas.

On some days over 200 fires were recorded in the country, with thousands of firefighters fighting multiple out-of-control wildfires in different parts of central and northern Portugal.

Thick smoke, the smell of burning wood, and the sight of fire-fighting aeroplanes in the skies, drafted in from across Europe, have become ubiquitous.

Hot summers 

The area of central Portugal that has been most impacted by the fires this year is known as the “Interior Pine Forest”, but eucalyptus is now the dominant species.

As an example of how extensively it has been planted in some areas, consider that around 70% of the area that burned in June was covered in eucalyptus and pine plantation.

Eucalyptus grows well in Portugal because of the hot summers and wet winters, and the powerful pulp and paper industry has taken full advantage of this.

A combination of appalling forestry policy, lack of any enforcement at the local level, and a depopulated and abandoned countryside has meant that eucalyptus plantations now cover huge areas of central and northern Portugal.

In fact, Portugal has more eucalyptus than any other country in the world proportionally, and more than any country in Europe in absolute terms, despite being a relatively small place. In some areas you can drive for hours through eucalyptus plantations.

Rivers and streams

This has been to the complete detriment of Portugal’s natural forests, wildlife, and communities that rely on precious spring water. Nothing eats eucalyptus here – not even goats.

The trees are so successful and invasive as the oils they give off actually prevent other plants from growing near them, and prevent animals and soil organisms from living on their leaf litter.

Eucalyptus plantations are “green deserts”, devoid of biodiversity, exhausting the soils they are grown in. After a site has had eucalyptus planted, been cut three times, then replanted, and cut another two or three times, as is the custom here, not even more eucalyptus can survive in the soils that are left behind.

Compounding this is the practice of “rip-ploughing”, where hillsides are ploughed on contour with bulldozers, literally scraping off any top soil and plant life before new plantations are created.

Eucalyptus is also highly water intensive, sucking up hundreds of litres a day where it can, reducing water flow in rivers and streams, and drying up the springs that sustain many communities throughout the dry summers.

Linked to climate change

And then there’s the fires. Eucalyptus trees don’t just catch fire, they spread them. They have evolved specifically to deal with fire, where long strands of bark move the fire quickly up into the canopy, and the volatile oils they produce intensify it. Eucalyptus leaves can project fires hundreds of metres further, making fire breaks in plantations almost redundant.

Conditions in Portugal this summer created the “perfect fire-storm”. The extreme heatwave in June that affected much of southern Europe has been directly linked to climate change, as have the severe drought conditions that have impacted most of the country.

By 2050 these extreme conditions will be the norm for Portugal. That’s right, the fires will only get worse.

Contrary to public opinion and all of the evidence of the devastating impacts of eucalyptus, successive governments have only incentivised its planting, leading to a situation where there are illegal plantations everywhere, and regulations that specify safe distances from houses and roads, adequate firebreaks, and inter-planting of native species are simply ignored. 

Portugal is a sad example of how misplaced support for industrial tree plantations can go badly wrong. A supposedly “green industry”, as the pulp and paper companies and government ministers (before this year’s fires) would have you believe, has helped to create an environmental disaster, feeding the cycle of climate change impacts.

Serious political will

This should serve as a lesson to policy makers who are now putting plantations at the forefront of climate mitigation strategies globally. In the absence of serious political will to tackle the root causes of climate change, “biosequestration” is the new buzzword, involving vast tree plantations that suck up the emissions of a fossil-fuel addicted world. 

Despite all of the evidence of the social, environmental and of course fire impacts of plantations, large-scale afforestation and fairy-tale technologies such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), where huge plantations will be turned in to smoke that is then stored in old oil fields, are the best ideas that have come out of the landmark Paris Agreement so far.

If mitigation efforts are focused on sequestering future emissions with technologies that don’t exist and plantations that hurt communities and biodiversity, rather than stopping the emissions in the first place, then the strategy that is supposed to reduce the impacts of climate change will likely only make things worse.

New eucalyptus growth is already sprouting from the ashes of Portugal’s wild fires, but as the villagers of Ferraria de São João have shown, we can choose to dig them up instead.

The example set by Ferraria de São João should be followed on a global scale, as restoring natural ecosystems will make us more resilient to climate change, and protect communities from the impacts of it. 

This Author

Oliver Munnion is the bioenergy campaigner and graphic designer at the Global Forest Coalition. He lives in central Portugal.

Families from the Lao Tribe in the south are leading the way by turning away from a number of non-organic fertilisers that are used widely in the coffee industry to boost crop yields.

Instead, they are using alternatives like homemade fertilisers and pesticides, which are going a long way to improving the quality of their farms and lives.

A long line of farmers

“Our land and soil is very important to us,” says Chon Vilaysak, a coffee farmer and Lao Tribe member living within Bolaven Plateau, which is an elevated region in southern Laos, famous for its coffee production.

“If you use chemicals, you will damage the soil and you won’t be able to grow many things, or you will only end up adding more chemicals in order to grow,” he says referring to problems found within soil treated with chemical fertilisers, including loss of nutrients and poor water retention.

Chon lives with his wife, Nouphai, and their seven children in Nong Luang village and like many of the farmers in this region their entire $8,000 yearly income comes from coffee farming alone.

In total, Chon and his family own 7 hectares of land, the bulk of which they use to farm a mixture of Robusta and Arabica coffee crops, with a little land used for growing fruit trees and vegetables for themselves.

Both he and his wife come from a long line of farmers: Chon’s parents previously harvested rice near the Cambodian border, while Nouphai’s family has a history rooted in coffee.

Teaching sustainable methods

Chon explains how he has always been reluctant to using chemical fertilisers on his crops but it wasn’t until he was taught new green methods by Michael Gomez Wood, the executive director and co-founder of non-profit organisation Fi-lan’thro-pe, that he started to fully benefit from sustainable techniques.

Michael set up the charity with Fi-lan’thro-pe director of Asian programmes Cana Little in 2011 to work directly with indigenous, tribal coffee farmers.

Over the last 6 years, the charity’s goal has been to create a network of communities where sustainable agricultural methods can be shared among farmers to enable them to not only earn more from their crops but ensure they don’t damage their environment for future use.

“We’ll fill every gap in the farmers’ knowledge to move their coffee towards specialty quality coffee,” Michael explains. “Then we’ll connect them with buyers who are willing to pay them a higher price for their product.”

He and Cana are teaching sustainable methods to farmers such as creating organic fertilisers, pesticides and composting.

A number of coffee regions

The fertilisers are made from fermented fruit and plant juice, which is sprayed over the coffee crops to stimulate leaf and cherry growth.

Other innovate techniques that are being used include the creation of biochar – an organic substance that works in a similar way to activated charcoal, which rids humans and animals of toxins.

“Coffee has some of the most valuable waste streams in the world such as the husk, which can be used to make biochar”, Michael says, as explains some of the benefits of using substance.

“The inclusion of 1 per cent of biochar in the farmers’ animal feed, for example, reduces 80 per cent of methane emitted from pigs, and cuts 60 per cent of methane emitted from cows.”

Fi-lan’thro-pe works in a number of coffee regions across the world including the second largest coffee exporter, Vietnam, as well as India and Indonesia.

Most compelling reasons

In Laos, the team works with local translator and environmentalist Eh Nyotkhampheuy, who meets with new and existing Lao farmers to explain the benefits of going sustainable.

“Organic farming is not easy,” admits Eh. “Nowadays farmers want to make fast cash, so they just want something that can grow quickly and sell quickly. They don’t think about the poison of using chemicals or the many benefits to going sustainable.”

For farmers like Chon, who have already made the switch to sustainable methods, the positives heavily outweigh the negatives. Understandably, one of the most compelling reasons for farmers to cut out chemical use is down to price.

“The market requires organic goods and products and if we sell organic coffee, we can sell for a higher price,” says Chon, who estimates that he can get nearly double the amount of money per kilogram for his Robusta beans on the market if they have been organically cultivated.

By cutting out the need to buy non-organic fertilisers and pesticides, farmers are also seriously reducing their outgoing costs.

Coffee cultivation process

But economic incentives aren’t the only reason that these communities are choosing to become sustainable. Chon says a number of farmers in neighbouring villages have had health issues due to the heavy use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides.

“Chemicals cause health problems. Farmers living in a village close by are using chemicals too much, which is causing problems to their health like liver problems. They have to go to hospital often,” he says. Clearly the need to go sustainable isn’t one to be ignored.

The next step now is for Fi-lan’thro-pe to secure funding so some of these families can implement the charity’s zero-waste programme.

This would introduce the likes of animal waste into the coffee cultivation process and create not only further environmental benefits but additional income streams, through the creation of new animal feeds and alternative organic fertilisers.

This would certainly be a game-changer for Lao farmers like Chon and his family, who live in some of the lowest income brackets in the world.

And for Chon this is not only an exciting step but a simple one. “Once you know what sustainable farming is you realise it’s not that hard, we are farmers so this is just our job,” he says. “Land is life.”

This Author

Robyn Wilson is a freelance journalist currently writing and travelling across Asia. She is a former news editor at Construction News. She blogs at Weird Fishes and tweets at @RobynFWilson.

Alban Gannon adores his guide dog of four years, Usher. “He’s a darling of a guide dog. I’ve cared for all my dogs but he’s a real sweetie.”

But Gannon is very scared that he is going to lose Usher. According to Gannon, in April, charity Guide Dogs, who provided the German shepherd, threatened to take him away, saying that Gannon had been evasive about allowing the charity carry out its annual checkup on the dog’s health and wellbeing.  

SIGN THE PETITION

Gannon said that the charity claimed that they sent him letters about the inspection, but his severe blindness meant that he could not read them, so was unaware of when he was supposed to meet a representative of the charity.

‘Aggressive and patronising’

Gannon, 59, said that the charity has been aggressive and patronising towards him. After being told that his dog would be removed, he was then told that the charity had changed its mind, only to receive a letter saying that he needed to sign up to an agreement in order to keep Usher.

“I’ve got to sign up to a plan to aid greater communication between us. That doesn’t sound too bad. But it’s very nebulous the way it’s worded,” Gannon said.

Gannon lives in Brighton, but travels frequently to Ireland for family reasons. He said that Guide Dogs has asked him to provide telephone numbers of his friends so that they can find out where he is. However, he does not want to provide this information due to bad experience in the past.

“I found that two friends of mine had had phone calls from Guide Dogs asking where I was. But Guide Dogs hadn’t contacted me directly,” he said.

Gannon, who has been blind for some 40 years after losing his sight in his early 20s, has had four guide dogs in the past. “I understand why some people would lose a guide dog under certain circumstances, but I’ve been nothing but gentle.

Very agoraphobic

“Guide Dogs hasn’t been able to justify taking my dog away from me. They’re ignoring my questions but at the same time they want me to jump through hoops,” Gannon said.  

Gannon, 59, said that the situation had damaged his health, including sleeplessness and flare-ups of gout. He fears that losing his dog would severely affect his life.

When he had been without a guide dog in the past he had become very agoraphobic, he said. “I doubt I’d ever go out. “I’ve become so used to working with a guide dog I wouldn’t be able to cope. I’d be empty.”

Without a dog provided through the charity, Gannon said he would have to find the money to buy one himself, and then train it, which would take at least 18 months.

“I’m kind of on the run at the moment. They’re just looking at any excuse to take my dog away. I just don’t trust Guide Dogs any more,” he said.

A spokesperson for Guide Dogs said: “The health and wellbeing of the people we support, and our dogs, is of the utmost importance to us. We’re currently working with Mr Gannon to establish the best way forward for his guidedog partnership with Usher.” She added that the charity could not comment further owing to confidentiality issues.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and the former deputy editor of the environmentalist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

The European Commission has called on the EU’s most senior judges to penalise Poland for flouting an emergency ban on logging in Białowieża Forest, the best preserved forest ecosystem in Europe.

In July, the court ordered all chainsaws and harvesters to be stopped immediately while it considered the case. EU judges issued the emergency ban due to intensive logging taking place in the forest, which is in breach of EU nature laws.

Polish authorities have claimed that they are removing trees to tackle a bark beetle infestation. Last year, the government approved a plan that would allow a threefold increase in logging in the forest – about 140,000 hectares of pristine woodland on the border between Poland and Belarus, parts of which are untouched by humans.

The forest is home

But many scientists and the European Court confirm that bark beetles are not a threat to the forest, and if the natural ecosystem is left alone, it will thrive. Dead trees are extremely important for the biodiversity of the forest, they argue.

The timber harvesting has been opposed by the Polish public, scientists and environmental campaign groups including Greenpeace, WWF and ClientEarth. The forest is home to many rare birds, lynxes, wolves and the biggest wild-ranging herd of European bison.

But Polish environment minister Jan Szyszko not only ignored the court’s temporary ban, but declared his intention to openly, the first time this has happened in the history of the European Union, according to campaign group Client Earth.

ClientEarth lawyer Agata Szafraniuk said: “We hope, for the sake of the forest, that the court will uphold the emergency logging ban and do everything to make Minister Szyszko obey the law, which is here to protect Bialowieza’s unique nature.

“Ten years ago, when Mr Szyszko was first Polish Environment Minister and was served another emergency interim measure to protect nature, he changed his attitude and complied. He must do the same now,” she added.

Activists removed

The Polish government now has four days to respond to the court, which is then expected to make its decision by the beginning of October.

The commission launched the legal case, which has been fast-tracked at every stage, in 2016, after a formal complaint by ClientEarth and seven other campaigning organisations.

This week, activists from across Europe have joined Greenpeace Poland to stop the logging. Dozens of people have been chaining themselves to trees and logging machinery to stop foresters.

Marianna Hoszowska, head of communications for Greenpeace Poland, has argued: “Some of the activists have already been removed by guards, but we aren’t moving until we know that this forest is protected.

“We will not let this ancient and fragile ecosystem be cut down for profit. We won’t stop resisting until the entire forest is recognised as a National Park.”

Strict protection zone

In July, a meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in Poland reiterated concern about the running commercial logging damaging the Bialowieza Forest and urged Poland to immediately halt wood extraction in the old-growth forests.

Poland had allowed the increased logging activities without evaluating the potential impacts on the Outstanding Universal Value of the Forest, for which it was inscribed on the World Heritage List, UNESCO said.

Meanwhile, the Belarusian government has increased the strict protection zone on its side of the forest by 1,250 hectares. The court’s verdict on the ban is expected in the next few days.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and the former deputy editor of the environmentalist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

Our understanding of the Earth we inhabit is undergoing a radical change. The modern ideas of the Earth as the environment in which humans make their home, or as a knowable collection of ecosystems more or less disturbed by humans, are being replaced by the conception of an inscrutable and unpredictable entity with a violent history and volatile mood swings. Earth System scientists have reached for rough metaphors to capture this new idea – images of “the wakened giant” and “the ornery beast”, of Gaia fighting back and seeking revenge, of a world of “angry summers” and “death spirals”.

This new conception of the Earth System is inconsistent with the understanding of a Nature victimised and colonised by humans that has emerged since the 1960s. It is an understanding captured in phrases from the 1990s like “the end of Nature”, “nothing but us”, and “the Earth’s cry for rescue”, and morphing into more recent renderings like a “humanised Earth”, “the kind of Nature we wish to have”, “Nature no longer exists apart from humanity,” and “It is our choice what happens here.” Whether the mood is one of lament or triumph, in all of these expressions Nature is our victim or our servant.

The Earth has turned against us
Yet Earth System Science now tells us that, rather than dying, Nature as the Earth System has in fact come alive or (perhaps a better metaphor) is waking from slumber. It’s true that wherever we look we see human influence, but at the same time we see stirring an angry, ornery, vengeful Earth that is more detached from us than it has been for 10,000 years. Contrary to the comforting expectation that in the Anthropocene we can have “the kind of Nature we wish to have”, as we enter the new epoch we will meet an Earth that is further and further from the Earth we might want. And against the belief that the world we will inhabit is the one we have made, the world we will have to live with is the Earth we have turned against us.

In other words, these views of the end of Nature and of a humanised Earth subject to our choices may have been appropriate to the Holocene, but Holocene thinking has been supplanted by Anthropocene thinking. This all follows from the primary fact that the Anthropocene is a rupture, whereas all of these views about the death of Nature and so on do not recognise that a rupture has occurred, but write as if there were continuity, a continuous process of human colonisation going back thousands of years, albeit one that has intensified in recent decades.

Is the new goal to save ourselves?
So, on this new Earth, notions of human domination – whether positively as mastery or negatively as victimisation – have to be discarded. It follows that the benign ideas of good stewardship and a loving Mother Earth are redundant too. Nature is no longer passive and fragile, suffering in silence, “the sister [who] cries out to us”, in the words of Pope Francis. In the Anthropocene, it is no longer tenable to believe that “our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us.” In the Holocene, to view the world, as the encyclical does, as “entrusted … to … men and women” was a plausible working hypothesis. But no more. Now when Mother Earth opens her arms it is not to embrace but to crush us.
 
Our goal can no longer be to save Nature, but to save ourselves, from ourselves and from Nature, knowing that every disturbance to the Earth System reduces the chances of doing so. Nature is no longer (as Pope Francis writes) “a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness”, but a grim report in which scientists speak to us and grant us a glimpse of disrupted natural patterns and a chaotic climate.
 
Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that it is both a sublime Earth that presents itself to us as beautiful when becalmed and terrifying when enraged, an intimate planet and an alien one, Mother and Other.

This is an edited extract from Clive Hamilton’s book Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene, published by Polity Press (and by Allen & Unwin in Australia). The article was first published in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine, September/October issue 2017.

Clive Hamilton is Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, Australia.

The Resurgence Festival of Wellbeing will emphasise the need to shift society’s emphasis from economic growth to growth in wellbeing, as Satish Kumar, Editor Emeritus of Resurgence & Ecologist, explains.  

“Over the past 50 years, governments, businesses, industrialists and economists have been stridently focused on economic growth, overlooking its fundamental purpose.

“The speakers and participants at the Festival of Wellbeing are coming together to question this notion of economic growth for its own sake and to address the ideal of growth in wellbeing.

“Economic growth is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. We cannot have unlimited economic growth on a finite planet. Our focus must shift from economic growth, to growth in wellbeing.

He added: “The present emphasis on economic growth at all costs is the cause of environmental pollution, resource depletion, climate change and waste, which puts huge stress on people and our planet Earth.

“The current system of economic growth doesn’t solve the problem of poverty, inequality, and social injustice. Therefore, instead of economic growth, we need growth in human health and planetary sustainability.”

The day’s exciting talk highlights include: Satish Kumar’s elucidation of the interdependence of personal and planetary wellbeing; James Thornton, founding CEO of environmental lawyers ClientEarth, extols the Earth as our natural teacher and guide for creating an ecological civilisation.

Also in attendance are: Siân Berry, Green Member of the London Assembly, explores solutions to the lack of safe, affordable housing in London; Paula Byrne, Chief Executive of ReLit (literature/mental health charity) promotes poetry as a bridge to wellbeing; James Sainsbury, Chairman of The Resurgence Trust, gives an overview of the charity’s work in support of wellbeing; and a talk by leading educationalist Sir Anthony Seldon explains the practical benefits of mindfulness.   

In lively conversation sessions, Satish Kumar and Professor Tim Jackson (Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity) discuss ‘Prosperity without Growth’; and Sharon Garfinkel (festival producer) talks to Ahmad Nawaz, a 16-year-old activist and survivor of a Taliban attack, about the role education can play in bringing peace to the world.  

Inspiring performances reflecting themes of the day include poetry by Imtiaz Dharker, Indian classical song and instrumentation by Jatinder Singh Durhaialy, a short play-reading by writer Maya Kumar Mitchell, and a stirring acoustic set from singer-songwriter Catty Pearson.

James Thornton, founding CEO of ClientEarth, says: “I’m delighted and excited to be involved in this year’s festival, because the time is ripe to begin doing things differently.

“With geo politics in turmoil and much more going on around the world and in the UK which is of serious concern to the environment, it is clear that the motives of some and the actions of others need to be countered if we are to preserve our planet for future generations. When we talk about the importance of wellbeing it is not just for people, but for the planet too.”

We invite you to join us for the Festival of Wellbeing on 23rd September 2017 at St James’s Church, Piccadilly, London W1J 9LL.

For further information/bookings, contact the Resurgence office on 01237441293 or visit www.resurgence.org/wellbeing

The Festival of Wellbeing is a fundraising event for The Resurgence Trust, an educational charity registered at Ford House, Hartland, Bideford, Devon EX39 6EE. Registered charity no. 1120414. Tel: 01237 441293. www.resurgence.org

It is a mysterious truth – and one the experts struggle to explain – that Britain has fewer woods than just about any other European country a nd yet it has vastly more ancient trees. We have destroyed our forests, while opting to spare a large number of individual trees, most frequently the oaks and the yews. Perhaps the two facts are connected. 

Over the centuries, there must have been thousands of moments when someone was eyeing up an ancient tree, axe in hand, and yet they decided – once again – to leave it alone, while their European counterparts just started swinging.

And this is why, when you walk in the bountiful broadleaf woods of Normandy or Lombardy, you will find you are looking at trees of an invariably uniform age and size, whereas, lurking in the last few woods of Britain – and not just in the woods, but in the fields, hedgerows and car parks – there are giants. 

This is something we have chosen to do. It can’t just be because we harbour trace memories of the time when trees were sacred. That’s important, for sure, but it’s also true of the rest of Europe. Perhaps what’s more significant is the British history of common land.

We gaze at trees

Why would you want to destroy something of value and beauty that belongs to you? The ancient trees all show signs of having been lopped, pollarded and harvested: but they were not felled. So even when the land was enclosed, or some absentee landlord was vandalizing his own woods, it’s possible that the local people tried to save what they could. We can but dream.

There may be spiritual reasons. John Stewart Collis, writing in Down to Earth, thought that the love of Nature was embedded so deep in Britain because we sense there’s something hidden, waiting to be revealed.

This is true. We gaze at trees, we hug them, we lean our backs on their welcoming trunks, we lie on the ground above a busy mesh of roots, staring at the lulling branches – we are enfolded by the trees. Perhaps we are waiting for them to answer our questions. But can we really say this is an exclusively British trait?

Even so, there are something like 2,000 ancient yew trees growing in Britain, while there are only about 100 left in the whole of the rest of Europe. And oaks! There are well over 100 ‘great oaks’ in England (the ‘great’ means that the trees are over 800 years old); but you won’t find that number in a vast swathe of land stretching from Calais to Cadiz and Athens.

Shows us in a good light

What’s more, we are uncovering ancient trees in Britain all the time. Remember the 60 medieval oaks that were discovered last year in the grounds of Blenheim Palace? Where have they all been hiding? Do they think it’s now safe to come out? Of course, we shouldn’t get too carried away. Over 100 great oaks left in the whole of England – that’s compelling evidence of a massacre. But it is nonetheless something to celebrate. 

There is another possibility: in Britain, do we love the trees, but fear the woods? Have we cleared the undergrowth and thinned the trees, so we can stand back and admire a few mighty specimens free from the hidden menace of outlaws and boggarts? Is this what we’re really after? Pasture and parkland and a republic of sheep?

It’s possible, despite the enthusiasm of ‘rewilding’ devotees, that what most of us really want is more order; and perhaps we’d all secretly prefer something along the lines of a Sunday night BBC country estate, complete with grand trees, sweeping lawns, a table set for tea, a chewing of cows just beyond the ha-ha and Tom Hiddleston’s famous white buttocks humping rhythmically in the shrubbery. 

If I were to stretch for one final reason why Britain has more ancient trees than other countries, I’d say it’s because we like our history – especially (but not only) the history that shows us in a good light.

Of course, we are also famous for our world-class hypocrisy: we have saved these trees even as, at the same time, we have demolished the woods and forests that once surrounded them.

But the survival of these few ancient trees is thrilling. We have passed them through the generations with veneration and love and they are still here, our friendly giants, looming in the woods, cities, hedgerows, farms and parks. We should seek them out and give them the protection they need. They have a wisdom that we need. 

This Author

Peter Fiennes is the author of Oak and Ash and Thorn: the ancient woods and new forests of Britain, published by Oneworld Publications on 7th September 2017. This is an extract from the work. © Copyright Peter Fiennes 2017.  

As bovine TB spreads across the UK, it is no secret that the new government, like the previous is in turmoil over its response.

Chief Scientist Ian Boyd and now Chief Vet Nigel Gibbons are both leaving their roles.

Not specifically because spread of a disease that they have been unable to stop, but their time is up and they can slip away from the deteriorating situation. Both made it plain at the March 2017 London bTB conference that industry behaviour is holding progress back.

The background is not hard to work out.  From the Great Recession of 2007 and the European debt crisis, a decision was made to try to force growth in the UK beef, dairy and leather industries.

After the ravages of the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease on the National Herd, the plan was to attempt this without the necessary restraint and extreme caution on cattle movements that dealing with bovine TB (bTB) demands. 

Years of removing cows

Mission-impossible? It will not be the only area where around 2010, decision makers gambled heavily, knowing that judgement day on ‘hide-now-pay-later’ approach might somehow be avoided.

‘Save the economy at all cost’ may include ‘bankruptcy later’ with heavy collateral impacts on people’s lives, but hey, we live in a changing world and profit comes first.

In Wales, more sensitive testing using the gamma interferon bTB test has made useful progress, with a 47 percent reduction in Bovine TB herd breakdown since 2008.

Elsewhere, including the High bTB Risk Area of England, the use of the old tuberculin skin test alone has not. This is also because cattle farming practises have changed and cattle breeds and health have also altered since bTB eradication in the 1960s.

It may be that 50 more years of removing cows that react most strongly to the skin test has selected those that react less to it. Failure to give a positive result may also be due to small amounts of bTB bacteria that may rest dormant or in a latent state, hidden in healthy looking calves and cows.

This uncomfortable truth

These animals escape the skin test and sometimes a proportion of the gamma tests by simply not being active enough to be detectable, but they are capable of emerging and leading to a new breakdown at any time.

Whatever has changed, it is quite clear that gamma interferon testing has helped reveal that even if an infected herd passes two final 60-day skin tests and is declared TB-free, there is a chance that in over a quarter of them, bovine TB ‘carriers’ remain.

They then may go on to become infectious, particularly following the process of small numbers being frequently traded to new farms on a very regular basis. This is the behaviour that senior European veterinary experts have been repeating for the last 10 years or more that we are crazy to be doing. In fact the view is that we are a joke.

All this is known and not really contested. If the skin test does not weed-out 90 percent of infected animals but 80 percent or sometimes just 50 percent then the millions and billions of pounds spent on testing and compensation are effectively wasted and the epidemic creeps more slowly across England and into Scotland and Wales or the countries still foolish enough to import English cattle under present circumstances. 

This uncomfortable truth comes with the acceptance that the cows that react to the skin test but are not found to have visible lesions at the slaughterhouse were in fact all, or all but a few, infected after all with bovine TB.

Immune response in animals

However, recent findings indicate that that those animals reacting to the test but with bumps not big enough to send to slaughter (the so called inconclusive reactors) are also almost all TB carriers and potentially provide an ongoing source of disease outwards to the National Herd.

This is a shock to the system for bTB modellers too, who looking back on years of bald assumptions may also resist the implications, due to the pile of papers now needing a revisit. Modellers thrive on death and uncertainty. They may think bTB is slow to spread and to become contagious rather than quick to spread and good at hiding and passing on. 

But now there is a new kid on the block. No longer a baby, it is up and walking but not as steadily as it might be. Phage RPA or the ‘phage test’ is a clever method, adapted from human TB diagnostic test.

It uses a virus made harmless, that finds, invades and multiplies only in TB bacteria, to become a marker confirming the presence of the bacteria itself. Why is this new? Because in the past, the skin and gamma tests have detected an immune response in animals – signals that they may be diseased and that the body is recognising infection.

They do not however overcome the problem when an infected animal suggests it is not infected, which can happen for a very wide range of reasons. 

An encumbrance

With Phage testing, for the first time it is possible to detect tiny amount of TB bacteria in tissue, blood and even milk. What’s more it is far quicker than the skin test, with results available in 6 hours. Governments around the world are excited about Phage testing, as a new dawn if not a magic bullet.

What’s not to like? Well the USA and Canadian government are giving awards to Phage research and rolling out application programmes to address many issues, as Phage can be used for different types of bacteria, not only bovine TB. It can also be used for a wide range of animals. 

There has been a pilot project here in Devon. But last year, Defra seemed to more than turn their nose up on investigations trying to determine the value of this new technology. You would think that the potential and need in the face of the current bTB emergency was so great that they would be funding and accelerating the potential. All very strange?

There is also a feel that senior scientists in government agencies, shovelling large amounts of public money into cattle vaccination projects in university departments for which they sometimes have a rather close interest, is becoming an encumbrance.

However, cattle vaccination requires a holy-cow; the ever illusive Divergence or DIVA test to distinguish between infected and vaccinated individuals. Otherwise all vaccinated animals will appear to be infected as they give a positive immune response. Amazingly Phage testing test now provides that breakthrough too. So why-oh-why, the hold-back?

Loss of lucrative funding

Well the fact is that the measured use of vaccination could have been used for years to help strategically contain manage and reduce bTB, were it not for globalisation and the wish for the UK to maximise sale of beef and dairy exports at all costs despite the bTB crisis.

Also the Ministry always struggles with ‘strategic’ in its free market bubble and heavily cut-back offices. The constant pushing back of vaccination as the probable long term solution has gone from being almost forgotten, to suspicious, to yet another embarrassing research gravy train for friends and fence sitters.  

With Phage testing, however, vaccination is no longer a blind alley for UK and Ireland to sigh theatrically about, stating sadly with lowered voice that ‘it’s going to be another ten years at least you know’. The world has woken up to this even if most politicians have not.

Those in vaccination research might be eyeing Phage testing, with a ‘why didn’t we think if that first’ thought and realising that actually on its own, without vaccination, Phage-RPA may be the bigger part of the solution.

Is it the loss of lucrative funding by a small sector of the comfortable research bodies that has been holding back farmers rights to the best services they should have, to tackle the appalling TB crisis? Ruining farms, people’s lives and breeding stock? 

Financial-loss pendulum

As this becomes clearer and more widely known, Defra is enacting a slow volte-face in order to extract itself from its nasty risk profile. It knows all this and might be sweating about the implications.

It is quietly approving now, of the work in Devon on Phage testing and a few tentative further trials in Cornwall. Perhaps also some use in Wales that is stuck just using gamma (which in some countries is dogged by manufacturing glitches) and the skin test.

Wales is casting around for something else to make progress with, particularly the 65 TB persistent herds in and around Pembrokeshire. Adding badgers to a rather tired shopping list without the required ingredient.

But why still the slow-train on what Welsh Government officials describe as a war-zone? bTB is a massive eye-wateringly expensive countryside disease crisis.

And the financial-loss pendulum can swing back in favour of the public and farmers who, as in Ireland, have paid the billion pound bill for dud skin tests for decades and the hopeless, cruel badger decimation using snaring and shootings.  

Prevarication in the bTB war zone

No need to waste £100 million a year with a foolishly distant 2038 and (can you believe it?) 2065 strategy in Northern Ireland. Where are the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee?

It seems crazy that government did not pick up Phage last year or this year and run with accelerated trials that might take just a few months. Who exactly is holding it back?

So where now is the political hold up – the grit in the Vaseline? Well it is this. Defra can huff and puff about rules and regulations and setting precedents from bringing new solutions forward but that is all prevarication in the bTB war zone.

With its absorbed old MAFF component it has long known that the English High Risk Area, especially Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and beyond is riddled with TB.

Even the Edge Area and beyond has growing hidden TB time bombs as this year our current cattle movements system releases bTB into Cumbria and Scotland.

Blaming badgers 

The main political problem is that any serious attempt to tackle bovine TB will shrink the UK cattle business because in any realistic effort there are simply not enough ‘clean’ cattle to re-stock . The trade ‘volume’ – that horrible term that applies to machined goods as much as cows – would shrink, including exported powdered milk to Asia etc. 

The hold-up is the need, when routing out TB, to remove perhaps up to a third or more of cattle to clear a UK herd. It is also the need for establishing strict long-term quarantine capacity for all farms and between adjoining farms.

That may be a logistical headache and short-term one-off cost, but could be done in months and years not decades. And it is a case of the sooner we start the more we can save and the fewer farms suffer.

This is why since 2010, even gamma testing which catches many but not all of those left behind by the skin test has not been funded or properly promoted for use in the HRA.

For some time now, the existence of TB carriers in clear-testing herds has been known. So blaming badgers became the name-game. The ‘carrot’ alongside full compensation to help keep the NFU quiet.

Improve farm biosecurity

This is also is well realised by the senior government officials, veterinarians and industry reps and thinkers pulling the strings. They would rather talk up a broad range of anti-TB measures that may slow the spread, but not deal with stopping a disease that has to be stopped. Now no one now wants to possess the problem and its sour origin. 

Equally, no one saw Phage coming. Gove has only recently been briefed. The past strategy has been to hoodwink most farmers and the public into thinking there is a viable solution in place when there is not, that approaches are working when they are getting worse and to use taxpayers money to subsidise commercial intensive livestock export businesses and producers on the back of the public, while farmers and cow herds suffer. Scandalous?

Well, we all know it is a wicked world and that stuff happens. But actually Phage testing has come along to peel away the delusion and deception. It is now possible with the clever, not so new but un-promoted test to clear out all of this nonsense at last.

And yes, we do need to maintain and improve farm biosecurity. We do need to monitor TB in wildlife when TB in cattle comes down, to see how long it remains and to study that properly.

We could start immediately by using Phage tests for compulsory pre-movement testing of all cattle to start breaking the cycle. No conflict with the day- to day skin test testing, if that is what is wanted. But the skin test has had its day. It is now about the hand-over. And until that starts current funds are being sprayed into wind and against wall.

Warts and all

Any losers? Farmers and vets who do the tuberculin skin testing will have a less demanding routine compared with that for skin testing. Vets will work hard to destroy that regular workload and farmers the compensation pay-cheques.

They must surely now be the first to get behind the use of Phage – why wouldn’t they?

The British Veterinary Association and British Cattle Veterinary Association also have something to get really, really excited about and to embrace surely? Oh yes, and the media might cover it in full detail too – warts and all?

This Author

Tom Langton has been a consulting ecologist to government, business and industry and a voluntary sector volunteer, more recently working on assisting small pressure groups in their legal opposition to destruction of species and habitats in Europe.

Brexit gives the Conservatives “a golden opportunity to push for a new approach to our environment”, prominent party members said in a report published last week.

The report is authored by activists and Tory MPs and was launched in Parliament by Sajid Javit, the Local Government Secretary, in Parliament. It said Brexit was an “opportunity” that “cannot be missed”.

The report was co-published by the newly launched Conservative Environment Network. Mark Holmes, the group’s Interim Director, writes that we must involve the natural world in “every area of public life”.

A vaccuum in British law

The report comes after two Parliamentary committees warned Brexit risked degrading Britain’s environmental rules and standards. The Conservative MPs call for more strident green policies in areas such as cycling, air and water pollution, waste recycling and electric cars.

Rebecca Pow MP, the co-editor, suggests higher environmental standards could benefit the UK economy, since “sustainable, healthy food grown to the highest standards and welfare codes could pay dividends as we promote ‘Brand Britain’ in the post EU era.”

The Commons Environmental Audit Committee and Lords EU Energy and Environment Subcommittee warned Brexit risked leaving a vaccuum in British law once European institutions no longer shape UK environmental laws.

While several authors stress that gardening can help the vulnerable or needy, the report omits key environmental issues. Most praise the government’s environmental record, which green groups have attacked.

Green spaces and gardening

The report, a series of short essays by Tory MPs, includes no chapter on climate change, energy policy or biodiversity loss, and gives no significant space to these issues. Aviation, airport expansion and fracking it omits entirely.

The report emphasises contact with nature, casting it as a solution to social ills. It stresses that green spaces and gardening can help prisoners, the homeless, unemployed and mentally ill.

Pow writes that voluntary horticulture schemes help in “tackling deprivation”, and that “having pretty gardens” in part of her constituency, “encouraged the clearing of litter”.

Matthew Offord MP links “a clean and green environment and reduced crime levels”, while Holmes writes that some communities suffer “poor health, family breakdown, housing, low educational achievement”, and that green spaces can “have a profound impact” in preventing crime and improving life chances.

A breathtaking series of attacks

The report’s authors repeatedly praise the government and defends the Conservatives’ environmental record. CEN’s co-directors quote Environment Secretary Michael Gove and praise “the positive environmental track record of conservative governments around the world.” Mark Holmes adds that the “Conservatives have a sound track record on the environment of which we can be proud.”

Pow writes that she is “pleased to say, the Conservatives are already leading the way” on sustainability, while Richard Benyon MP claims ground-breaking green policies “are being implemented and we are starting to see the benefits”.

But environmental campaigner Tony Juniper has called the Conservatives’ term in office the worst period for UK environmental policy in 30 years, after the party banned onshore wind, cut renewables subsidies and abandoned home insulation schemes. It also dumped electric car incentives along with green tax targets, reversed a ban on bee-killing pesticides and reneged on a pledge to block Heathrow expansion.

Liz Hutchins of Friends of the Earth accused the Tories of “a breathtaking series of attacks on environment policies”. Theresa May would later abolish the Department for Energy and Climate Change shortly after becoming Prime Minister. Defra figures released last month show the government cut biodiversity spending by a third since 2008-9, even as three quarters of priority species have suffered long-term decline.

Action needs to be taken

Other parts of the report do criticise the government’s record. Alex Chalk MP notes that just 2 percent of journeys were made by bike in Britain in 2015, compared with 27 percent in the Netherlands.

Banning petrol and diesel cars by 2040 is “a laudable aim,” writes Andrew Selous MP, “but this should be a baseline expectation, not a target.”

And Matthew Offord MP notes that “many of our rivers are facing unprecedented pollution for many years to come and action needs to be taken to relieve this problem now.”

This Author

Tim Holmes is an ‘active bystander’ and also researcher, writer and editor. He tweets at @timbird84.