One’s estates
Oh, gee, I thought Priss Choss was such a keen environmentalist.
The duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, two of the royal family’s largest portfolios of land, have snubbed tree campaigners who are calling for the royals to rewild their estates.
Well. You know. There’s The Environment, and then there’s One’s portfolio of land.
Rewilding advocates at the campaign group Wild Card have been meeting for months with the crown estate, which manages most of the royal land and pays the revenue into the Treasury. They say relations have been “really positive”.
However, the duchies are separate to the crown estate, and not subject to the same level of accountability. The two organisations – described by the land campaigner Guy Shrubsole as “medieval anachronisms” – manage more than 73,000 hectares (180,000 acres) of royal land between them, with all profit going directly to the royal purse.
That’s how it is when your ancestor was the successful mob boss.
Both estates have lower levels of tree cover than the national average. The duchy of Cornwall, run by Prince Charles, has only 6% tree cover, and the duchy of Lancaster has 13%. The average in the UK is 16%, while in Europe it is 38%.
Choss is a tree-hugger of other people’s trees.
The duchies have no intention of talking to any of these pesky rewilding people.
“The duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster have categorically ruled out meeting with our campaign. This is an appallingly undemocratic affront to our futures,” said Emma Smart, campaigns manager for Wild Card, which has highlighted the lack of forest cover on royal land.
The group has delivered a 100,000-signature petition and emailed the duchies on nine occasions, but has had no response.
Wild Card is asking the royals to practise what they have preached during the Queen’s jubilee tree-planting scheme and allow more trees to grow on their own land.
…
The duchy of Lancaster owns about 2,020 hectares (5,000 acres) of grouse moors on the North York Moors and about 180 hectares (450 acres) of grouse moors in the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire. Campaigners have said much of this land lies on peat bogs*, which should be allowed to grow wild to sequester carbon instead of being used for grouse shooting.
There it is, it’s the grouse shooting again. What do the environmental benefits of trees matter compared to a handful of toffs shooting birds out of the sky for the mere sake of killing them?
*Updating: see Enzyme’s comment on peat bogs as much better carbon sinks than forests are.
Slightly related: I came across reference to this Irish Times article from March 2021, and the opening paragraphs are a most beautiful takedown of the British Monarchy.
Maybe theycould send in some Labour Grandees…
The only thing I know about a duchy is that you have to pass it ‘pon the left hand side.
OK, but this is important, and it perhaps does undermine some of the point about tree-cover. I’ve no love for grouse-moors, and many grouse moors are close to peat areas: anyone who’s been to the Peak District can attest that there’ll be grouse-butts in one place, and a couple of hundred metres away you’re up to your thighs in peat.
BUT… Peat-bogs are not forest. They are AMAZING carbon sinks. According to the Beeb,
(Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-61607510)
Granted this, complaining that they have lower-than-average tree cover is to miss the mark. In fact, if they had more tree cover, they’d be worse for the environment: much worse, in fact.
Bluntly, in huge parts of the UK, what you want is scrubby upland moors, some of which will be waterlogged, but some of which won’t – and the not-waterlogged bit is ideal for grouse-shooting.
By all means put an end to that. But pointing out lower-than-average tree cover is environmentally misleading.
I had exactly the same sentiment expressed to me in Portugal in 2003 by someone who said she found it ridiculous that a country would want to replace francoism with a king.
The third* most common argument I hear from pro-monarchy Norwegians is something along the lines of “Would you rather have something like the American model and get someone like Trump as the Head of State?”. This seems to presuppose that the monarchy does indeed serve a real function that must be served somehow, so if the monarchy is abolished we need to put something else in its place. My answer is the same as the one I give when religious apologists ask what atheists want to put in religion’s place: Neither the monarchy nor religion serves any function that needs to be served at at all, so we can just abolish both and have nothing in their place.
The fourth most common argument is that the monarchy supposedly plays some unspecified yet vitally important role in luring foreign investors to Norwegian companies. At this point I always imagine someone like Bill Gates or Elon Musk sitting there and thinking to himself “I was going to invest my money where one would expect the highest returns, but then I learned that Norway has a monarchy, so now I’ve decided to invest everything in Norwegian salted and dried cod instead and watch my financial empire crumble”.
*The first two are (1) “I still get warm fuzzies about the King’s admirable refusal to concede to the Nazi occupiers in 1940, therefore monarchy good” and (2) “but the Norwegian royal family is so much nicer and more in tune with ordinary people than those pompous snobs they have in Britain!”
This has been one of my pet peeves with environmental activists, who are often untrained laypeople. They read up on the subject and think they’re an expert, even though environmental issues have some of the most woo-infested sources, and also a lot of people take one thing and apply it everywhere. Example: trees.
My area is not naturally a tree covered area. We get too little rain to support large stands of trees, so the trees that grow naturally tend to grow on the banks of water bodies. Still, whenever anyone thinks “environment”, the first thing they think (and often the only thing) is “plant trees”. Which in this area may create problems because the trees planted often aren’t native and not adapted to our water patterns.
Also, when I was in Texas, and the city council was debating whether to allow oil leases in floodplains, the owners of said floodplain areas were dying to develop oil fields and get obscenely wealthy. Most of them were already wealthy; the paupers aren’t sitting on that sort of land. But they wanted more. So they kept bringing picture after picture of their land to show “see, there aren’t any trees there!” I finally got up and spoke, explaining that trees are not the only guide to a valuable community. Grasslands, and grassy floodplains, often have a valuable role in the maintenance of healthy functioning ecosystems. Of course it did no good. There were no trees, so the permits were approved.
People have been conditioned to have a knee-jerk reaction where trees are concerned. Cutting down trees, even diseased ones or ones that are invasive (like salt-cedar) can lead to the population getting fired up and stomping down to whatever governing body is closest and demanding cessation. In the converse, the absence of trees often leads to a profound apathy.
I’m glad we finally recognize that there are negative consequences to cutting down trees in bulk, but I do wish we could begin to understand that the absence of trees isn’t necessarily bad.
Disclaimer: I have no idea of the natural climax communities of this part of the UK, so this is meant to be a general comment only.
“That’s how it is when your ancestor was the successful mob boss.”
Or more literally the successful pirate/Viking leader.
After all Betty Windsor has her job because she is descended from Rollo first Duke of Normandy & from his descendent William the Bastard.
Basically the same thing. Pirate=mob boss=lord of the manor=king.
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The Windsors were German nobility not related at all to William the Conqueror, who took power 900 years ago. Even if you are talking the institution of monarchy, that predates the Conquest.