Private forestry comes out of the woodwork

Want to know who will really benefit from the big forestry sell off? Well a good starting point would be to look at who has benefitted so far from timber sales in 2011, put on hold today by the government. You can check out the winners yourself here. One undoubted winner is Tilhill forestry, the UKs leading forestry and timber production company, with a turnover in excess of £100 million. In fact of the 3 lots of forestry put on sale to date none have gone to community groups or charities. Included in the lots is land in Sherwood Forest, the New Forest and the Forest of Dean. Could it be that rather than wanting to put in place more safeguards on access and biodiversity, the real reason the government decided to put the sale on hold is they didn’t want to be selling off our forests to private companies at such a politically sensitive time?