Protecting coppice regrowth

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Protecting the regrowth of any coppice trees, be they Hazel, Ash, Sycamore (yes, that tree often so maligned for being non-native but ever so useful), or whatever else, is important if we want to see a a return for our labors.

In the British countryside there are a number of deer species roaming about; some of which are native, such as Roe and Red deer, while others, such as Sitka and Muntjac deer, have been introduced (unfortunately, one might say).

Deer pose quite a threat to a coppice system as they have a tendency to munch off the for them rather tasty new seasons regrowth, and if this is left unchecked those stools of whatever tree species will eventually die out, which would completely destroy a coppice woodland. However, deer are not the only “grazers” that pose a threat to coppice regrowth; rabbit (coney) and hare do too.

Deer may be beautiful to watch – and I do love to see them in the wild – but one of the reasons why deer are not popular amongst foresters is the amount of damage they can do to woodland. In late winter/early spring the males use trees to rub the velvet off their antlers, causing great damage to whole stands of trees. For this reason it is often necessary to control numbers of males. Though controlling of numbers – and not just of males – is also necessary, in the absence of predators, in order to preserve health and viability of the herd. Deer can also decimate, as already indicated, an unprotected area of coppice by stripping off all the new buds from the regrowth.

In a stable, fully functioning eco-system the population densities of grazing species are maintained at a sustainable level by top predators and in the past this would have been the case in the British Isles with species such as wolves, bears and lynx that would also have been roaming our countryside.

Now that we have lost those species it is important that we take measures to protect any coppice regrowth to ensure the survival of coppiced woodlands, which in some cases are also classified as ancient woodland.

There are several methods which can be used to protect coppice growth. One of them is to cover up the coppice stools with brash wood from the trees that have been coppiced (brash wood is the twiggy branches from the crown of a tree).The theory is that the brash wood would allow the re-growth the opportunity to grow woody enough so that it is unpalatable to deer. That, at least, is the theory. I have not tried it in practice (as yet). In places where it has been tried the success was not a very good one which could have been due to the brash not being high enough above the stools or the brash piles do not provide a high enough barrier.

Another method is to weave brash wood into a basket-like structure around the coppiced stool. The principle is similar to the previous method; the baskets should provide the new growth protection until they grow over the baskets. By which time they should be woody enough to be left alone.

Large scale coppicing projects often use of temporary electric fences. This is perhaps the quickest and most efficient method if a large coupe has been coppiced. The idea is that deer are completely excluded from the freshly coppiced coupe, hopefully providing complete protection to the new re-growth. Obviously this method will only be suited to certain circumstances where the presence of an electric fence is not a problem, and where there is no problem with interference by vandals.

Other kinds of temporary fences could, I am sure, also be employed, such as those plastic fences that are used often around building sides, road works, and such like and there is also a version available in black if one does not wish to use the more common orange colored fencing.

Perhaps the oldest and most traditional method of deterring deer from browsing a freshly cut coppice coupe is simply the presence of humans and this may have been one of the reasons why woodsmen would traditionally live in the wood for extended periods of time, sometimes full time even, near the woods they were working.

A method that is said to have been used on the European mainland, especially in Germany, to protect coppice regrowth or newly planted trees was a “fence” of rope into which were tied rags every foot or so that had been soaked in some evil smelling liquid. But, much like electric fencing, this will only work where there is no danger of interference by vandals or such. The idea here is that the smell will deter the deer entering the “fenced off” area.

In general forestry operation new plantations of trees are protected by so-called deer fencing, which is just a stronger and taller kind of stock fencing really, though there are also some that have added protection against hares and rabbits entering. But if Mr Bunny wants to get in he might decide to burrow under the fence. Not much that will stop him except for a fence that is dug quite a way into the ground.

As coppice regrowth, in general, does not require a long exclusion period temporary fencing of one kind or the other, and aside from the previously mentioned plastic fencing there is also the split chestnut type that is often used on woodland operations and also in agriculture for penning in or out small livestock.

While it may not look as pretty as a woven basket structure around a coppice stool both the orange or black plastic fencing and the split chestnut type are reusable and quick to erect and remove and thus might be the best option in the book. Split chestnut fencing may not require any stakes, though they do help, while the plastic fencing can be put up with road pins, for instance.

© 2015

For more on coppicing and why, etc. see “Managing our Woods”, a small book that explains the whys and wherefores of managing our woods in this way and calls for us to return to that way.

Woodlands

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Throughout history trees have formed an intrinsic and vital part of our cultural landscape. Our woodlands, and woodlands in general, have been managed and worked by woodsmen since antiquity supplying lumber, the most noble of building materials, and firewood for heating homes and cooking food, as well as wood from which to make the majority of products that were being used, from tools and tool handles, to kitchenware, including spoons, plates, and everything else in between.

Growing trees and using their wood is increasingly recognized as one of the most environmentally sustainable land uses. Yet, in recent decades our relationship with our trees and woodlands has waned, with the UK importing an estimated 80% of its timber, whilst only 20% of the country's woods are actively managed.

The Department of Land Economy of the University of Cambridge has been running a long-term study investigating trends in the management of private woodlands on traditional estates in England and Wales. The study commenced in 1963, continued through the 80's and 90's and the findings from the latest survey in 2006, strongly suggested that there has been a deterioration of the financial performance of many estate woodlands to the point where management has been reduced or even suspended.

It is not just the deterioration of the financial performance of the estate woodlands that we must be concerned with but the deterioration of them in general due to the reduction or even suspension of management. And it is not just the private estate woodlands that are thus afflicted. The same goes, maybe even more so, for council owned woods and woodlands. They are all in dire straights.

Wystan Hugh Auden wrote in one of his works “a culture is no better than its woods” and if we look around us today I would say many of our cultures are not worth much, considering the way we treat our “native” woodlands. However, thankfully, a revival of our “woodculture” seems to be on its way and this is to be more than encouraged; it is the way forward, for the new age, the coming age, is the age of wood, or the Wood Age. We have had the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, though, theoretically we are still in that one, even though some insist to call the current age the Technology Age.

Wood, however, is the way forward, once again (we have been there once before, I know) for many of the things that today we use plastic, for instance, and what better than that wood being home-grown, coming from a woodland near you. This would benefit not only the local economy and the local woods – and the woods in this country per se – but also the environment and the Planet.

Wood from local forests and woodlands also cuts down on the so-called “woodmiles” and keeps those to the absolute minimum, and this even more so if the sawmills and other wood-using businesses and craftspeople are local and the products sold on markets as local as possible.

The majority of woods in Britain, whether privately owned or owned by local and county councils are in dire straights and lack of market is but one small reason for this lack of proper management which has caused a multitude of problems. Lack of vision and lack of finance is another big part here as is the fact that there are a multitude of misguided “environmentalists” who believe – and are very vocal about this – that cutting any tree is bad for the environment.

Coppicing, the age-old and time-honored and time-proved method of managing hardwood woodlands, in which trees are cut at a certain age and then allowed to naturally regrow from the root stock, the stool, is not harmful to the environment at all. The opposite rather. It benefits both the woodland and the wildlife. In addition to that bringing our woodlands back into production, primarily by means of coppice management, not only benefits the woods and the wildlife but also the local economy as it will create employment and products. It is a total win-win situation. Realizing it though in the right quarters is an entirely different story.

© 2015

For more on coppicing and why, etc. see “Managing our Woods”, a small book that explains the whys and wherefores of managing our woods in this way and calls for us to return to that way.

Managing our woods

by Michael Smith, RFA, RFS, EcoFor

Britain, for thousands of years, had one of the finest woodland management systems; one that is hardly known and used elsewhere, namely coppicing.

Many misguided people honestly believe that woods and countryside need not to be managed but they do in order to be beneficial to both man and wildlife. And in Britain we have done a great job in doing so, especially as far as woodlands are concerned, for thousands of years. However, since World War Two neglect has set in and that for a number of reasons.

One being cheap imported wood, often tropical hardwoods, hazel beanpoles being replaced by cheap bamboo canes or even plastic ones, and the aforementioned misguided environmentalists what have insisted that trees and woodlands must remain unmanaged as 'Nature manages itself'.

But Nature does not manage Herself and besides we need and want wood for many things and if we replace handles of tools and utensils with plastic we are using a non-renewable resource, predominately oil.

Wood, properly managed, is a resource that continually renews itself and especially if and when the wood is harvested from sustainable coppice operations, and this wood is not just for firewood.

Firewood should never be the first consideration in woodland management when it comes to woodland products as there are many more things that can be created from the timber of much greater value, in more than one sense, than simply firewood or beanpoles.

Using the wood harvest for firewood should be the last resort although it is often seen as the primary one and as an easy way to make some income from a woodland. But it is far better to put the thinking cap on and ass a higher value to the timber produced by turning into other, longer lasting, products that into something that just goes up in smoke, literally.

In the first instance, when the management of a (long) neglected wood begun the timber may, unfortunately, be suited for little else than firewood or charcoal. But even in such cases of neglected woods thought come into play as to whether there is not more that can be made out of the timber; as in value-added products.

A large tree that is felled in the opening up of a neglected wood, be this sycamore, beech, ash oak, hornbeam, birch, or whatever, or a large stemmed coppice stool, has definitely and definitively more uses that just firewood. Marketing the wood, though, may at times be a chore and that is why many shirk from it.

Our woods produced the timber for all our needs centuries ago and most of those woods were managed as one or the other form of coppice. And those woods supplied all, or at least almost all, of our timber needs and they can again, or at least to a large extent.

The wood for tools and tool handles came from our woods, as did the wood for our kitchen- and eating utensils. Also for our fencing, our farm and garden gates, for our wattle and daub walls, and much more.

Today, because of the decline and lack of proper management of the British woodlands, small and large, the wood for our tool handles and sports equipment is, almost all, imported from abroad, such as American Ash for tool handles and cricket stumps, etc. And, despite the fact that English or British Ash is superior and preferred. Lack of wood from British sources, however, forces manufacturers to source timber from abroad.

The same, it has to be said, even applies to firewood and in 2011 Britain imported logs from afar afield as Poland, Western Russia and the Ukraine. Certainly not a sustainable way to go about it and that all because (no, not “because the lady loves Milk Tray”) in Britain the (proper) management of our woods has fallen by the wayside.

Time for a change and to bring our woods, small and large, privately owned or in public hands, including those in parks, back into production. Wildlife and the Planet will thank us for it.

© 2013

Beanpoles and pea sticks

Beanpoles and pea sticks are the mainstay of coppicing operations

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Not much that there can be said about beanpoles and pea stick, you may think, but that is where the error could lie.

Most of those poles for your beans today are imported bamboo and that certainly is not a sustainable way and neither does it benefit the local economy.

For almost an eternity gardeners and growers relied for beanpoles and pea sticks on the local coppice worker and both benefited. This can be the way again if we are just prepared to look at it from the right angle.

Beanpoles and sticks are one of the most reliable type of coppice product and can be harvested on a very short rotation coppice. Wood for other uses requires many more years to mature and thus beanpoles and pea sticks can be a reliable source of income to the coppice worker if the user is prepared too change his or her ways and go back to the ways it used to be rather than taking imported bamboo.

While it is true that bamboo is a fast growing grass – it is not a tree by any imagination despite the fact it can grow to forest size – it also has a long shipping distance. But, true, bamboo canes as plant supports generally weigh in cheaper than do coppice product beanpoles and pea sticks. However, on the sustainability scale bamboo canes and poles do not score very high because of their transportation costs, by way of fuel usage and thus emissions.

Locally cut wood products are by far more sustainable than anything else and they support local people and also, as coppice management of woods is a good thing, in creating biodiversity in the local environment even if one does not lend an actual hand in such biodiversity management schemes.

No more than forty years ago one would hardly see any bamboo canes in use as plant supports in vegetable gardens, allotments and even with commercial vegetable growers. Today, however, it is almost all that we do see and it is very rare indeed to see any locally grown and sourced beanpoles and other plant supports in use, which is rather a shame.

Beanpoles and pea sticks are the mainstay of most coppicing operations, closely followed, but larger wood is required for this, lump wood charcoal, and it is for that reason alone that we should, wherever possible, buy locally grown, cut and sourced plant supports and ideally directly from the woodcutter. That way he or she gets the money all and no middlemen take any cut.

Support your local woodland worker by buying his products and at the same time you are supporting the environment, biodiversity and the local economy.

© 2013

Coppice management

by Michael Smith, RFS, RFA, EcoFor

The management of woodlands and forests by means of coppicing – Niederwaldbewirtschaftung in German – is often, especially elsewhere in Europe, but also in the UK, only seen as a means to produce firewood and, maybe, beanpoles and some charcoal.

However, the products that can be made by means of coppice management of woods and forests is far greater and, in fact, this was the way that we managed our woods and forests in Britain for thousands of years, and that very well and successfully. The woods and forests thrived under this case more and better than under any other form of management.

While other countries used this form of woodland and forest management also in the great majority of European countries it has now been abandoned, and has been thus already for many, many decades, in favor of a management that can be done with more mechanized means than coppicing.

The abandonment of coppicing in British woodlands has cost us dearly in terms of almost destroyed woods. In some areas the old coppice stools are almost beyond redemption and this could result in the loss of the entire or almost the entire wood.

The Forestry Commission never did much in that department but then it was not its brief. Its job was the production of timber for the mines and some other applications, including the war effort.

After the Second World War coppicing in our woods started to decline drastically and dramatically, much due to plastic products, and bamboo canes for beanpoles and such rather than wood.

Wooden tent pegs, which were one of the products from coppice woods, were replaced, even by military and scouts with metal and plastic and the same went for so many other products that were once produced from the wood from our coppiced woodlands.

Baskets, once woven from willow from coppicing and pollarding operations, and some other pliable woods, were replaced by plastic and the same for the trugs and such used by bakers and others.

Now, with the revival and renaissance of wood stoves firewood is in great demand but our neglected native woods cannot even provide a small proportion though they could provide it all (at current demand levels) if they would but be managed and we import firewood from as far afield as Poland and Western Russia. Not very sustainable at all.

The same goes for charcoal and most of the charcoal on sale in Britain today, and barbecuing is very much the in thing, also in restaurants, has to come from abroad and, in that case, it comes, primarily, from tropical hardwoods.

The problem, aside from an environmental one, is that that kind of charcoal does not, unlike the local one, light easily and requires chemical accelerants in the form of barbecue fire lighters. Those, however, leave a residue and not just on the coal.

Before the “advent”, so to speak, of coal, charcoal fired the Industrial Revolution in Britain and while it, probably, caused some deforestation, most of it was sourced from coppice operations.

Wooden spoons, spatulas and other wooden kitchen utensils were once made by local craftsmen from local coppiced timber but from a certain time onwards those were made from often imported woods by factories and now the great majority of those utensils are made, in fact, abroad, in the main, nowadays, in China.

In times past almost everything wood came from local woodlands, with the exception of some furniture, that were under coppice management and the woods and the craftsmen prospered.

Coppicing is one of the best ways to maintain the health of woodlands and this system of management has great benefits for the environment. In addition to this this old way of woodland management also will benefit the local economies and that is too very important indeed.

Our woodlands and forest must be brought back under this age old management system in order to restore them to health and for the local economy of craftsmen and -women to be revitalized.

Unfortunately misguided environmentalists for years have been working against this as they, having read only those books that back up their own beliefs, believe that no tree should ever be cut down, for any reason.

In fact many have vehemently campaigned and forced, for lack of a better word, local authorities, woodland and forest owners and managers to leave woods in their “natural” state or allow them too “return” to a wildwood state. But there is no wildwood in the British Isles and has not been any for at least a millennium or more. Not that that has interested those.

Woodlands, many of them state with venom in their voices, do not need to be managed. Nature will do it all itself. Which is a false notion as, alas, left to their own devices those, formerly managed woods, will decay and that will the end of them.

Coppice stools that are not cut will, in the end, break apart and that often almost simultaneously and thus the woods are no more but just a piece of useless “wilderness”.

As soon as brambles and bracken take over – and this is very soon if a wood is not managed – and then not controlled the loss of habitat follows in a very short space of time. Brambles and bracken stop light getting to the woodland floor, and the same is true when the woodland is not being thinned, and anything of value will die and be smothered. But, they keep claiming, Nature will manage it all itself; it just takes a while.

This is not true, however, and man has to keep the regime of management that our forefathers began many hundreds of years ago if we wish to retain those woods and forests.

For thousands of years we have managed our woodlands and forests, more often that not by coppicing, and they thrived under our care and if we want them to thrive again we must bring those woods and forests that have been neglected back under this management regime and it must be done now, before it is too late.

© 2013