We're promised one big Northern Forest - and it's one great big diversion | Patrick Barkham

When the government is building HS2 and allowing shale gas exploration in Sherwood Forest, one suspects this new idea is designed to distract attention"A culture is no better than its woods," wrote WH Auden. "Tree planting is not synonymous with conservation," argued revered ecologist Oliver Rackham. "It is an admission that conservation has failed." Such wisdom suggests that the announcement by Theresa May of a new Northern Forest shadowing the M62 from Hull to Liverpool is a symbol of our times. A government covers its ills with the cheap (?5.7m) fig leaf of greening; a society builds a generic landscape with no appreciation for the ancient.It's tempting to fill this column with Rackham, who recognised that thoughtless or generic tree-planting "diverts funds and attention away from real conservation, and encourages people to go on destroying wild trees". In this way, the Northern Forest is greenwash, obscuring the government's destruction of older trees: HS2 will destroy or damage 98 ancient woodlands, while Sherwood Forest is explored for fracking shale gas. With their uncontaminated soils and 400-year-old trees supporting thousands of species, ancient woods are irreplaceable, but it's still deemed too expensive to, say, bore an HS2 tunnel under the bluebells of South Cubbington wood in Warwickshire. Continue reading...