As good a place as any to share the fact that in Norwegian Winnie the Pooh’s forest is the “100 meter wood” due to us having no idea what an Acre is. That this shrinks it down quite a bit, unless its other dimension is really large, doesn’t seem to worry anyone.
A forest can’t be regrown in six weeks. It’ll take five to seven years just to get small trees and brush. 15 years to get a real woodland area. It depends on the type of trees.
They could plant trees and shorten the process. That would save a few years and they’d avoid getting unwanted weed trees that never get big.
I’ve watched former pasture land left to grow unchecked. It’s amazing how quickly brush starts to grow. Trees take longer.
The thing about the Ashdown Forest that is being overlooked here is that quite a lot of it doesn’t really have many trees. Here is a picture of the fire damage - the affected area seems more scrubby that foresty in the traditional sense. Here’s a view over the forest from a little way up the road, which gives a reasonable impression of what the area is like. It’s not great that it burned, but we didn’t lose many two hundred year old oaks.
LOL we bush-hog fields like that in Arkansas. I’ve spent many a teenage summer driving the tractor. https://images.app.goo.gl/1jKnATjLUmESKEuV6
That’s the 50 acre woods? That’ll grow back in a summer.
When I was there in the mid 80s it was explained to me that the previous fall there had been a severe storm that had knocked down a lot of trees. It had been replanted but was pretty scrubby. So like an forest, it has to be renewed from time to time.