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| | | COSTING THE EARTH
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| | | Costing the Earth tells stories which touch all our lives, looking at man's effect on the environment and at how the environment reacts. It questions accepted truths, challenges the people in charge and reports on progress towards improving the world we live in. | | | | | LISTEN AGAIN 30 min | | | |
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|  | | | | 'I really enjoy working on Costing the Earth, because it has the time to get its teeth into a subject and the resources to look at it critically. I hope it manages to say something new about most of the subjects it covers.'
Alex Kirby
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ALIENS ON THE FOREST TRAIL?
Time is running out for Britain’s ancient woodlands and urgent action has to be taken in the next few years to save them, as Alex Kirby discovers when he tramps forest paths from Inverness to East Sussex for this week’s Costing The Earth. The threat comes from alien or exotic trees which grow quickly and cast deep shade, which kills our richest wildlife habitat.
Many native trees have been replaced with these conifers over the past half-century. Scientists had feared that the variety of plants, birds, animals and archaeological features in these Plantations on Ancient Woodland Sites (PAWS) had been destroyed. Now they have discovered that they can be saved.
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In the next few years, most of the plantations will reach "economic maturity" and the trees will be felled. If they are replaced with more conifers then the wildlife will not survive a second time. But there are ways to restore the ancient features and run profitable forestry businesses. Alex Kirby asks what should be done and who is going to pay for it as he visits a variety of places, including Forestry Commission woodlands in Scotland, Cawdor Castle, Wilderness Wood in Sussex, John Gordon Sawmills in Nairn and the Norbord factory near Inverness.
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