Forest management past and present
Edward North Buxton influenced Forest management for much of its first
sixty years. In 1885 the first edition of his Epping Forest gave a brief account of
its history and topography and provided itineraries for visitors. He was a
Verderer, and thus a member of the Epping Forest Committee, during the
period when management policy was evolving. Public criticism of thinning of
pollards ("100,000 by 1891" has not been contradicted) arose in 1894. (Essex
Naturalist 8: 52-71) and he used the fifth edition of Epping Forest in 1898 to
make a personal statement of the reasons for and expected consequences of
management. It is useful to touch briefly on this debate to show the origin of
some of the trends now contributing to a decline in the nature conservation
value of the Forest.
The Essex Field Club meeting of 28 April 1894 at which the matter was
debated heard that "when the Act laid down that the natural condition of the
Forest was to be maintained (Prof. G. S. Boulger) ventured to submit that it
enjoined an impossibility since there was no natural condition to maintain",
and that the Conservators "had no precedents to guide them." (Cole, 1894).
In giving an explanation of the Conservators' policy and practice Buxton
(1898 pp. 158 ff) stressed the long-term nature of the Conservators' objectives:
"It is essential for (the forester's) success that he should, with full knowledge of
natural processes, have ever present in his mind the probable results of his
operations, not only in this generation, but in fifty or a hundred years hence."
(p. 164).
This is sound ecological thinking. The Conservators took advice of "ex-
perienced gentlemen" on the management of the Forest and, eschewing felling
and replanting, proceeded with renewal based on a policy of thinning and
natural regeneration. It is unlikely that advice on the way vegetation and
animals would respond to the sudden cessation of the ordered management of a
thousand years or more could have been given then. Formal observation and
measurement of changes in semi-natural vegetation following changes in
management was scarcely known to science; and anyway, few opportunities
existed at that time when most non-arable land was being managed on
traditional, conservative principles. The Conservators therefore acted boldly,
though largely in ignorance.
While I leave other aspects of the Conservators' policy to those better
qualified to comment, management of vegetation, the places where it grows and
good in giving low priority to the needs of sensitive features such as plains,
marshes and ground floras of the groves. Whether this has been due to com-
petition with other objectives, lack of resources, or innocent neglect, I cannot
say; but the result is steady loss and decline.
We are now a hundred years on from the passing of the Act and eighty from
Buxton's exposition of the Conservators' policy. He divided his account into
sections and it deals with a range of aspects in detail. The sequence and
examples provide an excellent guide for selecting topics for comment and allow
comparison between management then and results now:-
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