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Commentators discuss the government's plans to sell off publicly-owned forests.

as "savage attack on Britain's woodland":

"[T]here is also the sharp-suited side to Cameron: the careerist moderniser who is so removed from ordinary decency that he hires the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson (still today in his Downing Street office!) as his director of communications. This is the same Cameron who authorises a savage attack on Britain's woodland, so much part of our common heritage and (to use the eloquent phrase of Professor David Marquand) our public domain. The Forestry Commission is probably the most enduring and finest legacy of the Conservative/Liberal coalition government which came to grief in 1922. What a shame it would be if another Tory/Liberal Coalition killed it off, 90 years later."

But the the proposals are "not as terrifying as some had feared":

"It rejects selling all commission land to the private sector, and proposes that the commission keeps its present role overseeing the country's forests, whoever owns them. There is no plan for a chainsaw massacre of England's ancient oaks. But nor, among its options, is there a proposal for leaving the commission unchanged on the grounds that, however flawed, it does quite a few things well. The government is determined that the state ceases to own and run forests directly - an approach shaped by ideology and financial circumstance before practical understanding."

The it is a measure of the lack of trust in modern politics that no one seems to believe the Environment Secretary when she says that England's forests will be safe in the hands of private owners:

"A sale would be bad for wildlife and restrict public access to the land, the public feels. The minister, Caroline Spelman, says measures will be put in place to prevent that... In the 1990s, the Conservative government under John Major abandoned a less ambitious sell-off in the face of a public outcry. Perhaps the public mood will change as cuts begin to bite. But for the Government to push this idea now is ill-advised."

Secretary of State for Environment . The article is headlined "I can see the wood for the trees":

"We are not simply going to sell off our precious forests to the highest bidder. We are not going to allow England's forests to be bought up, chopped down and built over. This simply is not true. We're in fact uprating existing protections (such as the planning regime and felling licences that must be granted by the Forestry Commission) to secure the future of our woodlands, and enhance them over time. We want to see woodland cover increase - not just in quantity, but in quality too."

The that selling off even the most commercial forests will be tricky:

"Kielder Forest in Northumberland is a 'commercial' forest, its principal purpose being to produce wood. At 250 square miles, it is England's largest forest and timber producer, providing 25 per cent of our domestic timber, mainly from imported Sitka spruce and Norway spruce, which account for 84 per cent of the forest's trees.
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"While Kielder may seem appropriate for commercial categorisation, it will require painstaking management, as it is home to 70 per cent of the UK's endangered red squirrels, driven to extinction in most of southern England, and shelters recovering populations of otters, ospreys and goshawks."

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