Earth First! In Victory Shocker

Campaigners in North Wales recently set up the Gelli Tree Village to protect deciduous trees around a badger sett in a cash crop forest. The Forestry Commission had planned to clear fell the forest but after a month of the Village’s existence they finally noticed the protestors’ presence. Campaigners put together a list of demands concerning the area’s future management: this was accepted by a nervous Forest Enterprise. Over two hundred coniferous trees and a greater number of deciduous trees all marked for felling were saved. In case this excellent news is not enough, the media attention generated by the campaign helped pressure Forest Enterprise into agreeing to replant the forest with deciduous not coniferous trees and to run the forest under a community management scheme. One commentator has claimed that if this takes place it will be “the first community run temperate rain forest in the Northern hemisphere”. Hurray for the riff-raff.