UK Nature and Environment

392 readers

24 users here now

General Instance Rules:

No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or xenophobia.
No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies.
No harassment, dogpiling or doxxing of other users.
Do not share intentionally false or misleading information.
Do not spam or abuse network features.

Community Specific Rules:

Keep posts UK-specific. There are other places on Lemmy to post articles which relate to global environmental issues (e.g. slrpnk.net).
Keep comments in English so that they can be appropriately moderated.

Note: Our temporary logo is from The Wildlife Trusts. We are not officially associated with them.

Our autumn banner is a shot of maple leaves by Hossenfeffer.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Kim

GreyShuck

Scrap subsidies to Scotland’s conifer forests, urges report (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 8 months ago by GreyShuck to c/nature

3 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A report has called on ministers to scrap the huge subsidies and tax breaks given to conifer forests because they do too little to combat the climate crisis.

The report from the Royal Society of Edinburgh said the tens of millions of pounds in subsidies given to the timber industry should instead be spent on longer-living native forests, which have greater and clearer climate and biodiversity benefits.

It said the Scottish and UK governments are wrong to argue that public subsidies are needed to help plant more, larger conifer forests. These plantations are largely monocultures using a single species that have a relatively short lifespan.

Instead, public subsidies should be diverted to planting millions of native broadleaf trees, including in urban areas, which capture and keep more CO2, support more plant and animal species, store more carbon in the soil, and have a far longer lifespan.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] YungOnions@sh.itjust.works 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I've seen these vast scale conifer forests and they are little more than neatly ordered lines of the same tree. There's no diversity, no real undergrowth, nothing. They're more like someone just copy-pasted the same set of trees over several square miles and then called it a day. Oddly depressing places, actually. Ultimately these are still better than nothing, but we can absolutely do better via reallocation of funding.

[–] prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago

They’re actually not better than nothing, they monoculture spruce forests effectively prevent wildlife from coming back and the farming of it prevents biodiversity.

It’s like a field of corn as far as benefit for the environment is concerned. It’s a benefit for lumber interests though