(^152) an environmenTal hisTory of Wildlife in england
American mink (Mustela vison), which began in 1929. Predictably, some
individuals had escaped within a few years, although breeding populations –
in the valley of the River Teign in Devon – were not recorded until 1956.^76
As many readers will be aware, mink have subsequently (in part as a
consequence of further releases) become a serious pest in many districts. It
is the only one of our introduced species which is carnivorous, and it has
made a significant impact in particular on the population of water voles. The
American muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus) – a third exotic animal established
on fur farms in the inter-War period – was less successful. There were over
80 Muskrat farms in the country by 1930, and substantial feral colonies
were soon established in the Severn valley, and smaller ones in Surrey and
Sussex. But a systematic programme of eradication, largely motivated by the
damage the animals wrought to river banks, ensured that they were extinct
by 1935.^77
The most environmentally significant form of diversification – one
which also reflected new social and political structures, especially the rise
of direct state intervention in the economy – was forestry. The agricultural
revolution and high farming periods had taken a terrible toll on ancient
woodland, and new plantations had not made up for it. By 1913 there
were only around 670,000 hectares of woodland in England, including
both areas of ancient, semi-natural woodland, and plantations established
in the course of the post-medieval period – no more than c.5.2 per cent of
the country’s land area.^78 The extent to which the nation was dependent on
imported timber supplies, especially to provide pit props for coal mines,
was made starkly apparent by the wartime blockade, and in 1916 the Prime
Minister, H. H. Asquith, appointed the Forestry Sub-Committee of the
Ministry of Reconstruction to consider the state of the country’s wood and
timber reserves.^79 This proposed that, over the following 80 years, no less
than 1,770,000 acres (c.72,000 hectares) of land should be planted with
trees, one and a half million acres by direct state purchase and planting,
the rest through private enterprise or joint public/private schemes.^80 The
Forestry Commission was duly established, and by 1950 302,000 acres
(c.122,000 hectares) of land had been planted in England, by which time
their first plantings were still less than 30 years old.^81 While concern for
strategic timber reserves, especially of softwoods, was the main reason for
the establishment of the Commission, as John Sheail has pointed out right
from the start the government had other interests, especially the relief of
unemployment in rural areas.^82
The policies of the Commission were fundamentally influenced by
continental forestry methods, by the need for fast-growing trees to rapidly
replenish timber stocks and provide pit props, and by the kinds of terrain
targeted for planting – almost exclusively upland moors and lowland heaths,
or derelict fields reclaimed in the previous centuries from such terrain. It
therefore concentrated on the planting of conifers, rather than of deciduous
hardwoods. Sitka spruce, Norway spruce, Japanese larch and lodgepole pine
elle
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