Search: pip howard

Site Specific Land Management Planning

15.05.2012

Pip Howard outlines the vital importance, ecologically, socially and economically, of listening to the landscape and listening to communities when planning land use/management, by using the ancient and down right logical principle of ‘site specifics’.

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One Size Does Not Fit All

21.11.2011

Pip Howard explores what is fundamentally wrong with ALL centralised policy, proposals and guidelines with regards land management (including planning, forestry, landscape issues, biodiversity etc.,) in the UK?

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National Planning Policy Framework – What about OUR WOODS?!

26.07.2011

The government has published it’s draft National Planning Policy Framework. Pip Howard explains what the reality will be for our woodlands and what the word ‘sustainable’ really means…

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Response to ‘Why Trees & Woods Matter’: Progression or Regression for UK Forest landscapes?

19.06.2011

Soil expert & silvaculturist Pip Howard challenges the Woodland Trust supported report; ‘The Importance of Trees and Woods’ from think tank ResPublica…

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“Nice Shelving, Where was it Grown?” – Grown in Britain

16.08.2014

 by Pip Howard   Whilst proper protection of the English Public Forest Estate still remains in the doldrums, and will do so until the promised legislation is forthcoming, there has been tremendous progress on peripheral issues. For whatever reason (and most of us have become far too cynical based on experience), the Government simply refused […]

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Forest Vision – Transforming the Forestry Commission

08.07.2014

Review by Pip Howard Early into the campaign against the Public Forest Estate sell off plans by the Coalition government, it became clear that many in the media, particularly many newspaper columnists, were drastically out of date with regards their viewpoint on the Forestry Commission, indeed continually around 20 – 30 years out of date. […]

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The Tree in Your Landscape

09.06.2013

One mature tree in a city is a full landscape in itself…

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Trading Places – biodiversity offsetting.

22.04.2013

With good design biodiversity could be increased on a development site. Biodiversity offsetting prevents this, it is selling your landscape, your place and you can’t say or do anything about it.

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Middle Ground not No Mans Land

05.02.2013

There is opportunity offered in the government response and now policy to do so. It is up to the independent campaigners, including ourselves to keep these doors open.

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Terroir (sustainable land management systems) – a way forward for forestry & farming?

15.01.2013

More forests can repair the damage done, not least in that most degraded of landscapes of all, the urban landscape. ‘Terroir’, the sense of place we feel when we connect to our landscape, a better way forward?

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Forestry Commission – you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone

13.11.2012

My message to our new environment ministers is this:

Please, DON’T put an NGO between us and those we trust at the Forestry Commission. Particularly over something as important as tree disease and forest resilience to climate change.

Please, DO give the Forestry Commission the resources and freedom it needs to work with us, the public, to advance our multi-purpose forests into a financially and ecologically sustainable future we can be proud to leave our children.

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Taking Green for Granted

01.09.2012

‘This green and pleasant land’ as celebrated at the opening ceremony of the Olympics is due to Britain’s very enviable climate which keeps it green. For how much longer though?

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Stakeholder or Shareholder; the great ‘greenwash’ party that is Rio+20

19.06.2012

“..we are all in this respect indigenous people fighting to protect our cultural heritage. We all have a right to our landscapes”.

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NPPF: The Treaty of Eland House

28.03.2012

The NPPF is a return to old school politics and good old Humphrey Appleby lingo (Although the referral to the wrong UN resolution on Sustainable Development is a major embarrassment).

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A Celebration of Save Our Woods & the Save Our Forests campaign!

17.02.2012

A year ago today the Save our Forests campaign forced Government to halt their sham public consultation and instead set up an Independent Panel on Forestry… Hen takes a look back..

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Soils, Sustainability & the NPPF

02.10.2011

Soil is the central hub for sustainability as essential to us and our economic progress as it is to the plants and animals we share our landscape with…

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Campaigning for Everybody’s Landscape

01.09.2011

The United Kingdom ratified the European Landscape Convention: It appears that whilst DEFRA are fully aware of the convention, are the DCLG?

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The Forest Sell Off & the NPPF: We Need a Dictionary of Definitions

27.08.2011

Without tools to aid the general populace to reach a rational decision, or an illustration that government, NGOs and other experts are talking the same language, we will forever be stuck in a mire of ‘green washed’ terminology…

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The English landscape has been stolen

04.05.2011

If the public forest estate is taken from us, will the next fight be against the NGOs?

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Case Studies

10.03.2011

In reaction to the case studies presented within, among others, the consultation document and the Adam Smith Institutes briefing paper; ‘The Forestry Commission’s Place in Modern Britain’, Pip Howard issues a stark warning… “Both within the consultation document, now void, and subsequent published argument which is contrary to the general opinions held by those who lobbied […]

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