THREE years ago, on January 3, 2011, more than 3,000 of us gathered during a blizzard\u00a0 the field at Speech House to send a message to the Government: the Forest of Dean belongs to us, all of us, and we will not allow it to be sold off, disposed or transferred to private hands. Never! Six weeks later, we were told they\u2019d got the message and the Government performed a \u2018mea culpa\u2019. \u201cWe\u2019re sorry. We got it wrong.\u201d But we warned everyone then that we had to stay vigilant to prevent the Government from trying to do the same thing again.<\/strong><\/p>\n And we weren\u2019t wrong. The time has come again for everyone to engage again with the fight to save our Forest from predators, and battle a new piece of legislation which, if passed by Parliament, has the potential of leaving our Forest of Dean open to exploitation from (to quote from the latest proposals) \u201ca range of commercial freedoms\u2026 [including] mineral extraction, agriculture and industrial lettings of land and premises\u201d. HOOF doesn\u2019t think there are anywhere near enough safeguards to protect the Forest from being taken over by private leisure and industrial concerns, and we fear that transferring the ownership and management to a public corporation could be a halfway house to full-scale privatisation.<\/p>\n The HOOF campaign ever since the Government \u2018yew-turn\u2019 of February 17, 2011 has been confined to diplomacy: meetings alongside campaigners from other English public forests with high-ranking civil servants and politicians. On umpteen occasions, we have had to confirm again and again our position in response to consultation after consultation: that the Forest remains ours and must always. We have worked very hard and spent many hours and days getting our point of view across repeatedly, firmly and politely, on behalf of all the communities and users of the Forest of Dean. And according to the other published responses to the latest consultation, HOOF is not alone in its concerns \u2013 most of our views are shared by many other organisations. But do the views of all of us count for anything versus the will of Government?<\/p>\n The people of the Forest of Dean and elsewhere still support HOOF and share its aims: this was shown at a recent fundraiser at Westbury-on-Severn Village Hall, a ceilidh dance organised by the community association Forest Unity when \u00a3500 was raised for HOOF. All who attended confirmed their commitment to our cause and showed they were ready to protest again.<\/p>\n The Independent Panel for Forestry which Government appointed did listen to us and take heed at the universal message they received when they visited the Forest of Dean. This was reflected in the Panel\u2019s final report of 2012. However, in its proposals, the Government has turned many Panel recommendations on their head to allow a potential free-for-all of commercial interests, to form a new management organisation which will be a public corporation just as British Rail, British Telecom and Royal Mail were\u2026 before they were privatised, became accountable to their shareholders and unaccountable to the public, to whom they previously belonged. And it won\u2019t only be the management of the Forest transferred to this public corporation, but our Forest land as well!<\/p>\n In spring 2014, the Government plans to introduce a new Bill to Parliament to form a new management organisation to \u201cown and manage the Public Forest Estate\u201d (of England, including the Dean), a public corporation given the freedom to open our beautiful Forest to \u201ccommercial freedoms\u201d which may include leisure complexes or \u201cmineral extraction\u201d. It will increase the risk of our Forest being sold or disposed of in the future.<\/p>\n There will be no White Paper, and we will only get to see the draft Bill on January 29, a mere month or six weeks before it is due to be introduced to Parliament. This, combined with the resurfacing of the idea of a \u201ccommunity right to bid\u201d for land that already belongs to us, gives a distinct sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu from the 2010\/11 battle which HOOF formed to fight. Few, if any, of our demands have been heeded and we feel as if we\u2019re back at square one.<\/p>\n In whatever language and jargon the Government dresses its proposals, they amount to the same thing: permitting the removal of OUR Forest from OUR hands and put into others\u2019 hands.<\/p>\n Do we want our entire Forest to be opened up to corporations, turned into a playground only accessible for some, by this or any future Government? Foresters, and all those who love our Forest and others across England must speak up NOW and demand with one voice: HANDS OFF OUR FOREST!<\/p>\n Please stay alert for further announcements in the coming weeks and months: we need everyone on board once again! The HOOF steering group will be meeting later this week (beginning of January) to decide on the next steps of the renewed campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" New Year 2014 message from Rich Daniels, Hands Off Our Forest (HOOF) chairman. THREE years ago, on January 3, 2011, more than 3,000 of us gathered during a blizzard\u00a0 the field at Speech House to send a message to the Government: the Forest of Dean belongs to us, all of us, and we will not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[186,883],"tags":[294,301,729],"class_list":["post-5814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commons-customary-rights-enclosures","category-environmental","tag-forest-of-dean","tag-hands-off-our-forest","tag-hoof"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n