a puff out of the atmosphere but every little helps and actually paying folk for increasing the number of trees on a lot of small scale plots is more to my liking than handing a huge amount to a few monoculture forest projects .
Useful for a source of income, but is it really doing anything other than promote good management? We are currently thinning the trees as otherwise the woodland gets too thick. We are running quite a lot of it as coppice, which gets cut every 5-7 years, so plenty of carbon capture with the new growth. We also have natural regeneration, which restocks the wood with trees all the time, so don't understand this having to keep the cutting down, as ours is more than balanced naturally.
i spose it does promote good management of woods that might otherwise be "recreational" for their owners . iirc the example was about 150 acres but scaled down there are a lot of uk woods that are much smaller and are unmanaged for timber /carbon storage ( wildlife or anything else except being there)
perhaps a similar business plan could be cut into even smaller bits to spur folk into running those well and probably giving scope for "travelling woodsmen" type firms as well .
as well as privately owned stuff there are many odd patches owned by local authorities ,network rail ,the coal residual thingy etc etc .
if i understand correctly it is about using the small parcels well by giving a commercial incentive to do so.
Yes, small woodlands are a problem. Quite a lot of farms have the odd few acres of woodland too, many historic. Our wood has a bit which was a 'row' (locally pronounced roo) that was associated with the fields at one time, but now regarded as part of the wood, although the wood bank is still there.
There are various incentives, like the fuel grants, but even they don't really make it viable for woods of just a few acres, which is what a lot of them are.
in parts of the usa 150 acres would be considered "garden" and commercial woodland areas come in 10000's of acres sizes or hundreds of sq miles in some parts .
i spose scaled to uk sizes ( not scotland perhaps) working to encourage management of say 5 acres and above might be possible if the admin could be made cheap .iirc the usa model was about $10 an acre start up fees to the admin company which seems very reasonable considering the long term returns.
Hairyloon
Joined: 20 Nov 2008 Posts: 15425 Location: Today I are mostly being in Yorkshire.
Useful for a source of income, but is it really doing anything other than promote good management?
Does it need to?
Surely the promotion of good management is a thing worth doing for its own sake.
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We also have natural regeneration, which restocks the wood with trees all the time, so don't understand this having to keep the cutting down, as ours is more than balanced naturally.
Yes, unless you are burning it then the carbon, for the most part, remains captured.
And younger trees tend to grow faster, so it looks that the project is founded on a false premise...
Unfortunately I often feel that these projects are founded on a false premise. Some people do their carbon offsetting by getting together as a group, driving a long way, then planting some trees. They feel they have 'done their bit', and drive home. The trees are sometimes in the wrong place and are frequently given no aftercare, so die. Overall result is a waste of fossil fuel. This sounds like another one of those schemes I am afraid.
As far as size is concerned, many British woodlands are less than 10 acres, and some even below 5, but overall they add up to quite a sizeable amount. If even small plots are linked by hedges they can be quite valuable for wildlife.
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