Deforestation

The National Forest for Wales

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Coed Cwm Einion

Today, at COP26, world leaders made a historic pledge to halt global deforestation by 2030. The Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forest and Land Use could be transformative in restoring balance with nature but it requires action not just words. Maybe the new National Forest for Wales can provide an inspiration and roadmap for how to achieve the pledge. Here’s an essay from the Liminal Forest exploring the National Forest for Wales concept.

Coed Cwm Einion, one of a small collection of ancient Atlantic Rainforests that can be found on the western edges of Wales, has prospered for centuries because its intimidating terrain that hugs the craggy valley sides near the mouth of the Afon Einion made it damn near inaccessible. Technically speaking, I was walking in Tilio-Acerion woodland, predominantly comprising small-leaved lime trees that grow in the rocky sites of the ravine and where ash and wych elm also grow.

Coed Cwm Einion was considered one of the best examples of this very rare type of woodland. It also was home to sessile oak, rowan and downy birch – ancient semi-natural mixed broad-leaved woodland that provide a home to a rich mix of biodiversity. These included 177 species of lichen (including the very rare Parmotrema robustum which looks like a cross between kelp and some lettuce that you’ve left in the bottom of the fridge for too long) and more than 150 species of mosses and liverworts. Lichen is often referred to as the coral of the rainforest such is its importance in supporting biodiversity. After some digital detective work, I deduced that the spongey, vibrantly green forest floor also consisted of marsh hawk’s-beard, Tunbridge filmy-fern and hay-scented buckler fern.

Amid this tapestry of ancient trees and the plant life below them the Einion river rushed through, bubbling and breaking into white foam as it encountered the many rocks and boulders in its path. Some of the larger oaks had grown out to hang over the river and touch their neighbours on the other side – the trees providing the river with a surrealist guard of honour.

Coed Cwm Einion looked majestic and magical to my untrained eye but actually it was slowly being nursed back to health after many decades of neglect, overgrazing and suffering under the yoke of invasive species that bully natural ecology (Rhododendron ponticum being a major culprit). The woodland was part of a seven million-pound multi-year ancient forest conservation and restoration initiative. And it was a prime example of the type of woodland that the new National Forest for Wales aimed to nurture and protect.

The National Forest was a bold strategy to embed an appreciation of nature and biodiversity at the very heart of what it meant to be Welsh. The idea was to create a connected ecological network throughout the country that would provide people with easy access to woodlands and forests wherever they lived and to protect, restore and grow tree cover and biodiversity to help combat climate change and species extinction.

The multi-year plan involved planting new forests and restoring ancient woodlands with an emphasis on nurturing native deciduous trees, breathing new biodiversity life into the hedges and edgerows that line the countryside and working with the farming community to improve tree cover on their land. It also aimed to educate communities and schools about the importance of nature and create a network of walks, trails and paths that will connect people to the forests and woodlands of Wales – some huge expanses like Wentwood, Brechfa and Bwlch Nant yr Arian along with other small woods like here in Cwm Einion.

The National Forest plan couldn’t have come at a more important time for Wales. Just 20 percent of the Welsh landscape had any tree cover (compare that to nearly 30 percent on average in mainland Europe). Only 15 percent was actual woodland – the remainder a hodgepodge of agricultural landscapes, urban areas and transport corridors that, while still valuable, didn’t deliver nearly the same degree of environmental benefits as intertwined woodlands could.

Even as the government was pledging £15 million over the next five years to bring the National Forest idea to life its own State of Natural Resources annual report was sounding the alarm – warning that Wales was using up its natural resources, including rivers, forests and farmland, at a completely unsustainable rate. In fact, it wrote, if everyone on Earth used natural resources at the same rate as Wales, two and a half planets would be needed. A complete rethink of our food, transport and energy systems was required but also individuals needed to come to terms with the impact the way they lived was having on nature.

Education was going to be an important part of helping people, young and old, reconnect with nature but so was the experience of being outdoors. And that experience had to be enjoyable even if sometimes it also would be challenging. That had been my goal in setting off on this walk – to map one route for a National Forest that would be enjoyable and also an achievement. Now that I had made it this far – some 150 miles of connected woodland walking from the start point in Wentwood forest – I was more determined than ever to complete the plan, even though my legs ached, my ankle felt bruised and my back had all the flexibility of a slab of Welsh slate.

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Could climate change cause another Aberfan in Wales?

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The coal tip slip at Tylorstown

Today marks the 55th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster in South Wales – where over 100 children died when a landslide from an unstable coal tip engulfed their school. I remembered Aberfan as I walked through the Rhondda Valley on my journey and contemplated the continued risk to Welsh coal-mining villages. Here is part of the essay.

Even as the coal mines closed their environmental legacy remained. What was noticeable everywhere we walked through coal mining country was the absence of vegetation around many of the towns and villages that serviced the collieries. That’s because much of the waste material and tailings from the mines had been deposited, dumped actually, on the hillsides around the settlements. A few days before, as we’d walked through the windfarm above Penrhys, we’d seen for ourselves the problems this practice had caused.

Below us we’d looked down on Stanleytown and Tylorstown, once thriving coal villages named after English engineers that came to speculate for coal and made a fortune. Today both villages sat stranded and forgotten in the steep, glacial valley of the Rhondda Fach. Probably the most successful thing to come out of Stanleytown since the coal mine closed in the 1960s is the comedian Paul Whitehouse.

Tylorstown, however, had been in news just recently but not for good reasons. In February 2020 unprecedented heavy rainfall caused a 60,000 tonne landslide at the site of an old coal tip above the town. We could see it clearly from our position on the mountain – a wide black scar on the hillside across from us.

As we looked down at the landslide it hit home exactly how, when you scrape the surface of south Wales, the legacy of the coal industry is still evident and still affects the communities that live among its ghosts.

The warnings of more landslides also evoked memories of the Aberfan disaster a couple of miles northeast of where we now standing. On October 21st, 1966 at around 9.15am a coal tip that had been piled on a mountain slope above the town gave way, sending an avalanche of slurry pouring down upon Pantglas Junior School where the young students had just started their lessons. The entire school was engulfed and local people were forced to dig with their hands in a desperate and ultimately futile attempt save the children. In total 109 pupils and five teachers perished under the weight of the landslide.

The Aberfan disaster shocked the entire United Kingdom – reminding a nation that was increasingly seeing itself through the lens of modern of the brutal reality of its heavy industrial legacy. Many Britons were starting to enjoy owning TVs for the first time and the horror was exacerbated by the scenes of the aftermath that were broadcast on TV news. That horror turned to anger as it became clear the accident could have been prevented –  reports revealed that the coal waste had been dumped over a natural spring and that the government run National Coal Board had been aware that the tip was unstable. The tribunal convened to investigate the disaster laid the blame squarely on the Coal Board writing that the “Aberfan disaster could and should have been prevented.”

Now there seemed a very real danger that another Aberfan-style disaster might occur in the future. The Tylorstown tip was just one of nearly 300 old dumping grounds across the south Wales valleys that were at significant risk of slippage according to one recent report – a threat exacerbated by climate change geologists had warned.

All over the world the effect of climate change is being exacerbated by widespread deforestation – trees and vegetation help anchor soil to the ground preventing erosion and landslips during heavy rain. This is hardly a new issue. Experts have long pointed to the effects of deforestation caused by sugar cane plantations all over Haiti as a worst-case example, while recent mining operations in Indonesia and Malaysia denuded vast tracts of hillside land.

Here in the valleys the situation was doubly troubling. Not only had all the local and available trees been cut down for pitwood leaving the surrounding hillsides bare and exposed to the elements, the collieries had then made the situation worse by dumping its waste on already unstable ground.

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Staring down at stranded assets in the South Wales valleys

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Looking down the valley from the Bwlch Mountain

Very little of the vast coal wealth that helped build Cardiff flowed back up the valleys to the mining towns we were looking down on now. The early morning mist at the top of the Bwlch Mountain had cleared and below us, in Ogmore Vale and along the Afon Afan, we could spot stranded ex-coal villages – mini-pockets of humanity jammed in among the steep sided valleys.

On our left was Nant-y-Moel – once home to the Wyndham/Western Colliery until it was closed down in 1983. To our right we could see the tips of Abergwynfi and Blaengwynfi (two sister mining communities on opposite banks of the Afan).

Perhaps the most sobering thing about the South Wales coal boom was how brief was its heyday. More than 57 million tonnes of coal were produced in 1913 by 232,000 men working in 620 mines in a thin corridor of hills and valleys no more than 10 miles wide. By 1920, the industry employed 271,000 men across South Wales but, in the years following the First World War, demand for Welsh coal began to wane. Top grade Welsh steam coal now faced new competition from mining operations in Germany and the United States and from an existential threat – an oil industry that was fast replacing the old steam age (and with devastating repercussions for coal-dependent communities like the ones we could see now that our oil-addicted society would do well to pay heed to today).

Nearly 250 mines closed across South Wales between 1921 and 1926. That year a Royal Commission concluded that the coal industry had to be reshaped and that miners needed to accept wage cuts. The private mine owners jumped at the opportunity and demanded large cuts. The miners’ union refused and on April 30th, workers who refused wage cuts were locked out and coalfields in South Wales and across the UK came to a halt.

For nine days the UK economy was paralysed as most of the workforce went on strike to support the miners. However, on May 12th, other unions returned to work after agreeing terms with the Government. The miners carried on until the end of the year when starvation forced them back to work.  

To stave off mass unemployment the UK government put some miners to work on large scale infrastructure projects – including the Bwlch mountain bypass (part of the larger Glamorgan Inter-Valley Road project) which was built in 1928 and which we were walking above right now. Before the road was built the mining communities had no way of accessing neighbouring valleys unless they undertook the type of hike we had embarked on, following ancient routes up and over the mountains.

The Bwlch bypass wasn’t just a public works project to ease the unemployed miners’ unrest – politicians also thought it could provide the communities with a way to access nature and escape the often dark and dank existence at the foot of the valleys. For this reason the road, with so many switchbacks it felt like navigating an Alpine pass, was constructed with room both for motor vehicles and pedestrians. Once completed it succeeded in attracting generation after generation of local sightseers to the top of the mountain. It became so popular that one enterprising Italian immigrant family set up a mobile ice cream van in the car park at the summit. They became so famous that the mountain became known as Ice Cream Slope by the many hang-gliders who headed up there.

The other major project that the UK government put Welsh miners to work on was planting vast forests of conifer trees. All across Wales the Forestry Commission set up camps for miners – primarily to “rehabilitate” and “recondition” the men so that they were ready for tough manual labour (notably on road projects like the Bwlch). Here in the Ogmore and abutting Afan valleys major new forest projects were launched. As we wandered now through a sprawling windfarm on our way to Maesteg we could see the results to the north of us – a wide carpet of connected conifer forest starting at Coed Bwlch and running across the horizon to Rheola forest (where some 13,000 acres was planted over a 20 year period) near the town of Neath. This monocultured expanse would become known as Coed Morgannwg (Glamorgan Wood) and nowadays, Afan Forest Park.  That’s where we were headed next.

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Chop and Burn – How the Normans conquered Wales through deforestation

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Caerphilly Castle

In 1066, (as every school kid in the UK used to know), William the Conqueror invaded the British Isles from Normandy and defeated the English King Harold at the Battle of Hastings.

William’s French knights, lords and barons moved swiftly through England claiming land and titles wherever they went. However, as anyone who has put themselves at the mercy of the M4 motorway or the Great Western Railway will attest, getting to Wales from England can prove a much tougher proposition. In 1081 a large Norman army invaded Wales but they didn’t much like what they found.

Today, I was walking through the hills and woods of South Glamorgan – from Bassaleg to Caerphilly – retracing what I thought might have been one of the routes chosen by the Norman lords as they marched on the Welsh kingdom of Morgannwyg & Glywysing.

My friend Jeff had tagged along for today’s walk which wandered through the woodlands around Draethen and Machen before climbing up onto the ridgeway that separates Cardiff from the historic castle town of Caerphilly (where I was born).

In the Welsh, the Normans encountered a populace who been used to living in the fluidity of constant domestic regime change, and who could even put up with the odd Anglo-Saxon incursion. The Normans, however, displayed a “gratuitous cruelty” (in the words of historian John Davies) that the Welsh refused to tolerate and so they started a 20 year campaign of woodland-based guerrilla warfare.

As the early Norman travel writer Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) recounted on a trip through Wales nearly a century later in 1188, the local people “neither inhabit towns, villages nor castles, but lead a solitary life in the woods on the borders of which they…content themselves with small huts made of the boughs of trees twisted together, constructed with little labour or expense, and sufficient to endure throughout the year.”

It was from these positions of strength and local knowledge that the Welsh launched a series of attacks and ambushes upon Norman armies in the decades following the first invasion – defeating a much stronger and better organised fighting force before melting back into the shelter of the forests.

These attacks cemented in the minds of the Normans the threat posed to their rule by Wales’ woodlands. Their attempts to fully pacific and control Wales took nearly 200 years to complete and for much of that time the Normans embraced a military strategy not seen in Wales since Roman times – they systematically felled forests to eliminate the threat of ambush.

In 1277, during one particularly brutal act, the Norman (and now English) King Edward I advanced into North Wales from his border stronghold of Chester with a dual army – one made up of soldiers and another of woodsmen (including sawyers, wood-cutters, carpenters and charcoal-burners) – who cut an invasion roadway some 250 yards wide, with another 200 foot of clearance on either side, through the dense forests for over 30 miles until they reached the town of Conwy. Another thrust of military deforestation took place not far from where we were walking now. In 1287, a force of woodmen 600 strong was employed to cut a path from Glamorgan to Brecknock via the Taff valley.

The threat posed by roads to the forests and the communities that depend on them continues to this day though today’s raiders are often economic not military. Huge areas of tropical rainforest in Africa, Asia and South America have been opened up to agribusiness and oil and mining companies through the construction of exploration roads. Once built, outsiders flood into the forest regions in search of land or work, clearing more of the forest and bringing with them diseases that local indigenous people can’t fight while transporting back to the cities new viruses like Covid 19.

Welsh resistance came to an end in 1283 when Edward defeated the Llewellyn the Last, King of Gwynedd. The Normans shored up their victory by building imposing, almost impenetrable castles to protect themselves from wave after wave of Welsh rebellions throughout the country – many feeding on the grievances of local people whose lands were being seized and woods chopped down. One of the biggest and most intimidating of all was Caerphilly Castle and that’s what we were looking down on now from the top of the ridgeway.

The Romans are Coming – A walk from Wentwood to Caerleon

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The view from Caer Licyn

I left Curley Oak, the wise tree of Wentwood Forest, and continue west across forestry tracks until I came across a fork in the road. One path headed down a steep ravine while the other carried on straight by the side of the woods. There was a Danger Sign warning that forestry workers were felling trees. However, there was no sound of saws or signs of activity so I kept going straight on the route I’d mapped.

After half a mile I stumbled on an ancient fort. Nowadays all that remains is a raised mound surrounded by oak and ash trees but, according to the OS map, this was Caer Licyn (Caer means fort in Welsh). It was marked as a Motte and Bailey (a style of fortification introduced by the Normans around the 11th century) but there was also some debate that it might have been a Celtic iron age site. As I stood by the mound, with its view across all the countryside below leading down to the River Severn, I couldn’t help wondering if this might once have been one of the Silurian Celt defences against the Roman invasion?

The route from Wentwood to Caerleon

By the time the Romans came knocking, the Celts of Wales, Ireland and Scotland were the last holdouts against a military machine that had routed all of Europe and most of what we now know as England. In Wales the Celts – many being refugees from Gaul – settled in small agricultural hamlets amid a matrix of oak dominated forests just like Wentwood.

The Roman army probably arrived in Wales about five years after it undertook its concerted pacification of the British Isles. But if the Romans thought they could quickly control this part of Wales they were in for a shock. In a series of guerrilla attacks over a period of five or six years the Silures led by their charismatic leader Caradog (known to the Romans as Caractacus) terrified the Roman forces with a wild dervish-like ferocity.

Even when Caradog was defeated, captured and taken to Rome he so impressed the Emperor Claudius with his bravery (and apparently his gift of the gab) that he was pardoned and freed. Strangely, he chose to live out the rest of his days in Rome rather than returning to south Wales.

His fellow countrymen and women back home didn’t fare so well. The Roman army had been harassed and frustrated for decades by the Celts’ launching raids and ambushes before retreating to their woodland hideaways. In order to destroy the resistance, the Romans decided to cut down the forests and eradicate the Druids who, by now, had retreated to their spiritual stronghold on the island of Mona (what we now call Ynys Mon or Anglesey in English).

They did so by slaughtering everyone on the island and burning to the ground the Druids’ sacred oak groves. From that point on, the Druids disappeared from Welsh history and entered the otherworld of legend. For the next thousand years different generations of poets and antiquarians would seek to rekindle the legacy and lineage of the Druids as you’ll learn if you stick with me on this journey.

But back to this walk. It was time to leave Wentwood behind so I joined the Usk Valley Walk – one of a number of semi-official Long Distance Walking Paths that snake their way through the United Kingdom. Now out of the forest, I could see the River Usk below me taking broad turns to make its way downstream – like a skier making wide slaloms down a mountain.

The view across the Usk.

In the distance was the town of Caerleon. In Roman times it was known as Isca Silurium and was one of the most important strategic forts in all of the British Isles. That’s where I was headed next.

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