Contentment

Contentment, originally uploaded by Ben909.

A young wild boar suckles the milk from its mother in the Forest of Dean.

The government has released the details of its public consultation on the sale of our forests. In summary, the proposal is that 'heritage' forests (eg Forest of Dean, New Forest) are handed to charities (though which, and what happens when the money runs out remains unclear, and the law will still be changed to enable a future sell-off without further recourse to Parliament), other forests to be sold to 'the community and civil society' ('cos we've all got bags of money to spare at the moment right?), and commercial forests to be sold to big business. Already the least forested country in Europe, this government won't be happy until it's all off-limits and in the hands of their tory mates.

Hands Off Our Forest - The Forest of Dean campaign.
The national petition - now over 310,000 signatures and growing.

Every day the pressure mounts on David Cameron and his government to ditch the undemocratic and widely hated Public Bodies Bill. In the last few days a YouGov poll, numerous national press articles and letters signed by the powerful and famous all say the same thing - we want to keep our forests as they are!