Agenda item

QUESTION BY MS G JENKINS TO CLLR C CAMPBELL, EXECUTIVE BOARD MEMBER FOR COMMUNITIES AND RURAL AFFAIRS

“According to Prof Sir Ian Boyd, former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, half of the nation’s farmland needs to be transformed into woodlands and natural habitat to fight the climate crisis and restore wildlife.  In that context, what plans have the council made for rewilding?”  

 

Minutes:

“According to Professor Sir Ian Boyd, former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, half of the nation’s farmland needs to be transformed into woodlands and natural habitat to fight the climate crisis and restore wildlife.  In that context, what plans have the council made for rewilding?”  

Response by Councillor Cefin Campbell, Executive Board Member for Communities and Rural Affairs:-

“The simple answer is that we have no plans for rewilding, however, we are looking at options for woodland creation on the land that we own and manage and it already manages several sites across the county primarily for biodiversity, that is as a County Council, from the Morfa Berwig Local Nature reserve on the edge of Llanelli to Ynys Dawela Local Nature Park in Brynaman.

As part of its Section 6 Environment Act duty the Council is expected to consider the impact of its land management practice on the natural environment and how these can be adapted to maintain and enhance biodiversity and promote ecosystem resilience.

The emerging Revised LDP, which we have heard about already this morning from Councillor Mair Stephens, also provides support for proposals for the creation and protection of new woodland, forests, tree belts and corridors where they seek to promote the delivery of national and local climate change and decarbonisation ambitions.

So the simple way of answering your question is no we have no plans but we are doing a lot of other exciting things to look at woodland development and so on.”

Ms Jenkins asked the following supplementary question:-

“I appreciate that you currently are being quite honest in saying that you don’t have any plans but if the Revised LDP proposals are talking about rewilding in a sense additional woodlands etc, would it not be appropriate to consider the 24 farms, the 22 parks, as well as the marginal land that you have as a Council and make plans to rewild those.”

Councillor Campbell responded as follows:-

“I think that there is a great debate about rewilding and what rewilding means, it means different things to different people. We all know about George Monbiot’s idea of rewilding which is to re-introduce wild animals like wolves, bears and wild boars. For many people that’s what they mean by rewilding.  Personally, I wouldn’t support that because we are at a point where we are.  The eco system has developed to a point where it is now with that very fragile balance being protected between those who farm and conserve the land and those who want to change the nature of our land and I think it is keeping that balance is what we need to do.  We have living communities to protect here in Carmarthenshire alongside wildlife communities and that balance between them has always been preserved by the guardians of the land, namely our farmers whose experience in maintaining quality food production side by side with protecting our natural habitat has been developed over centuries and passed on from generation to generation.  I entirely agree with you that with the land that we do own and the parklands that we have we will actively look at ways of planting as many trees on that land as is possible because they do sequester carbon, as many of you have rightly pointed out already.  But we need to have that balance as well between living communities and forestation and woodland and that is where I am coming from is to keep that balance. The peat bogs and the woodlands and the forestation programmes are only one answer to the carbon offsetting.  We have other ideas as well which I have already mentioned around renewable energy projects.  It is having the right mix of projects that will neutralise our carbon emissions and certainly utilising the farmland and the parklands that we have for tree planting is certainly something we will investigate moving forward.”

 

 

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