Friday, February 04, 2011

Misleading on forests?

A small expansion on Neil's comment to our (37% at least) representative to Parliament Mark Garnier's take on voting against the Labour motion.

If you were told that Garnier 

explained that the bulk of the Wyre Forest owned by the Forestry Commission (FC) was “heritage forest”, covered by the guarantee that it would not be sold off but could be transferred to a charitable trust.


He added there was also FC-owned “multi-use” land that had a commercial value and could be subject to lease arrangements. 
And were then shown the map of Forestry Commission  land in this area how would you interpret the colour index?
I'm guessing that you'd think that the "bulk" in green represents "heritage forest".

The actual colours: Green is multi purpose; red is small commercial; and those two specks of blue - Heritage. Has Mr. Garnier been misquoted by the Shuttle, is the map produced by Defra incorrect, or does Mr Garnier not realise that the bulk is not Heritage.

There is a fourth option of course but I shall not be crude enough to state it.

[Update - from a review over at WFA it's possible to reconcile this if you declare the entire green area to be owned by Natural England (although they only state they manage it in conjunction with the FC) and declare the lower red bit to be owned by the Guild of St George. That leaves only the top red section and the blue section... yet it's still difficult to look at these two similar sized blobs and state that the blue part forms the "bulk"]

[Update 2 - Tav's been delving more into this and discovered that the Guild owned land appears to be part of the big green blob. So we have two red's which appear to total more than the blue and a green which appears to total more than the red and blue - yet the blue forms the "bulk"?]

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