May 162016
 

White Wood ForumWith thanks to Kate Sargent.

For millennia, storytellers, musicians, artists and indigenous thinkers have engaged with the sensitive nature of our planet, exploring the complex relationship ecologies, economies and cosmologies have with people and all matter.

At the core of all this is a concern for the environment and obtaining peace.

The White Wood Forum is a continuation of thinking about art and ecology began by Joseph Beuys, whose practice both literally, with acorns from his 7000 Oaks, and conceptually sowed the seeds for The White Wood.

As a living monument to peace, created by the people of Huntly, the wood will grow and change as the oaks mature over the next 300 years. Working as an artist, pacifist and environmentalist, Beuys’ work acts as a confluence between social and cultural perspectives of sustainability: local and global understandings and lived practices around the world.

Our current eco-political system is designed by and for the very few, resulting in unending conflict and ecological decay. What world can we dream of for future generations? And what contributions can art and community make?

Focusing on the nexus between art, peace and ecology the White Wood Forum will ask how art can be in harmony with the key principles of sustainability, including next to ecology – social justice, grass roots democracy and non-violence.

By bringing together people from arts, anthropology, ecology, politics, peacemaking and locality, The White Wood Forum will ask how we can foster a culture of complexity, an art and a community that impacts the future, to the benefit of generations to come.

White Wood Forum

Thurs 26 May 7pm: Ex-Servicemen’s Club, Huntly.

Prof Tim Ingold: The Sustainability of Everything
Screening of 7000 Oaks with Q&A

Fri 27 May 9am-7pm, Stewarts Hall, Huntly.

Chair: Deirdre Heddon, Prof. Contemporary Practice, University of Glasgow;

Keynote: Satish Kumar, long-term peace and environmental activist;  Loïc Fel, Philosopher and Cofounder of The Coalition for art and sustainable development; Tim IngoldChair of Social Anthropology, University of Aberdeen; Robin McAlpine,Director of Common Weal; Shelley Sacks, Prof. Social Sculpture, Oxford Brooks University; Georges Thierry HandjaMapping Coordinator at the Rainforest Foundation UK; Rhea Thoenges-Stringaris, 7000 Oaks Society/Kassel; Caroline Wendling, White Wood artist; and others….

7pm Peacemakers’ Ceilidh with the Strathspey Fiddlers, Gordon Arms Hotel

Sat 28 May White Wood Opening Ceremony and Gala day. More info here.

Tickets:

White Wood Froum: £25 Early Bird/£35 regular; £10 Students/AB54 Citizens/White Wood planters (includes ceilidh)

Peacemaker’s Ceildh only: £5

White Wood Gala: free event

Nov 062015
 

roe-deer-fawn-picWith thanks to Suzanne Kelly.

Aberdeen City’s officers and the Liberal Democrats pushed for the so-called ‘Tree For Every Citizen’ scheme in 2012.

A Council officer promised the scheme was going to be cost neutral, and would have income. A herd of roe deer was veritably wiped out in a move 80% of the citizens objected to. How’s the scheme actually doing three and a half years later?

Despite the desperate claims of the city, the scheme is teetering on the brink of complete failure, witnessed by photographs and Forestry Commission documents.

More penalties possible?:

A Freedom of Information request saw the Forestry Commission releasing a report from 2014 which listed a catalogue of failings, and warned that the city might have to pay penalties if remedial actions were not carried out, which included weeding. These photographs were taken in early October at different points on the hill. Clearly, the weeds are winning over the trees.

Some of these documents, photos of the weeds smothering the trees, and the city’s figures from April on road accidents can be found here.

The city pressed ahead with the scheme despite having earlier paid a penalty of £43,800 for the failure of Phase 1 of the scheme on the hill.

Forestry Commission reporting advises that it is unlikely a large scale planting on Tullos Hill would succeed. The hill was used for industrial and domestic dumping for many years, but had supported deer, small mammals, birds and a variety of wildflowers.

A councillor had attempted to keep the hill as a meadow (meadowland is considered the fastest-disappearing type of green space) – but this was turned down by the officer supporting the TFEC scheme, on the grounds that it would be more expensive to enhance the existing meadow than to plant the trees.

Far from being cost neutral, the scheme has cost several hundred thousand pounds to date. With the potential for further penalties, the city is still pressing ahead with the scheme, which may require further animal culls, and further herbicide use.

To avoid penalties, the Forestry Commission wrote to Aberdeen City:

“All areas to be stocked to the minimum density as required by the model chosen. There is no allowance for over stocked areas to compensate for any areas where stocking does not meet the specification. The species found must match the species detailed on the map

  • All required weeding to be up to date and effectively controlling all weedspecies
  • Healthy and viable trees.”

Robust figures?:

The pressure group was meant to have the complete and accurate accounts sent to it covering all costs for the Tree For Every Citizen Scheme. It was immediately apparent that there was data missing. Not all known costs appeared on the spreadsheets released by the City (Aberdeen took over 5 months to deliver information which is held electronically).

The £43,800 penalty from the previous failure was missing, as were some costs identified in a previous freedom of information request. Some of the entries, totalling thousands of pounds are marked ‘unknown’ in the description column. Kelly is still awaiting answers to detailed questions put to the city. Even so, hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent on the Tullos Hill scheme, with the consultant, Chris Piper, receiving a five figure sum for his work and expenses.

Campaign Group’s Reaction:

Suzanne Kelly, a campaigner with the Save The Tullos Hill Deer Group said:

“Common sense has left the building, and anyone with eyes can see the weeds tower over the trees. The Forestry Commission report lists a catalogue of problems with the planting – lack of growth, lack of density, weeds, rabbit browsing, but funnily enough the spreadsheet doesn’t make mention of deer browsing, but the cover letter does. I’ve not seen a single tree guard knocked over as if browsed by deer. 

“What I have seen on my frequent visits is weeds towering over the vast majority of trees. Residents and community councils were over ruled by the city on this one, and as a result we’ve incurred hundreds of thousands of pounds in costs, and are probably looking at further penalties. I do not understand how the officer who insisted that this scheme was cost neutral is not held to account for the dismal state of the finances and the dismal state of the trees. 

“We had deer and a meadow. We now have a small number of trees that grew taller than the weeds – and per an earlier Forestry Commission report, the soil matrix is so poor they are likely to topple in strong winds. This was a waste of time, money and was done at the expense of existing wildlife. I’d be ashamed to be the consultant who earned over £100,000 for this scheme, or the officers who pushed it on an unwilling public.

“We are now told that deer account for an accident on the roads per week. However, repeated requests for that raw data are met with silence. The data I did see from the city in April was flawed in that it contained two incidents outwith the city, and included a deer found in a nature reserve car park. 

“As to the promised income? A recent Freedom of Information request says we might get some small income – if the trees grow – in 75 to 100 years. Someone should be losing their job over this in my opinion.”

In case anyone still thinks that the city actually cares about wildlife and biodiversity, the huge swathes of greenbelt given over for development puts paid to that.

So to do the comments made by Peter Leonard. In his report to the Housing commission Leonard wrote about engaging with landowners over deer management.

However, in an exchange with Suzanne Kelly, she wrote:

“There will be further animal deaths on the road – not least because of the development of wildlife habitat at Loirston Loch. As far as I can learn, absolutely no provision has been made for deer or small mammals to be relocated.”

Leonard’s reply was:

“This will be for the developer to answer.”

This hardly echoes the newly-found concern for the safety of motorists or wildlife.

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Oct 222015
 

roe-deer-fawn-picWith thanks to Suzanne Kelly.

Animal welfare activists and Aberdeen citizens opposed to deer culling have welcomed a promise that no deer culling would take place at least until a count of the animals is made.

Although the council will meet to vote on culling next week, the last official count done in January 2014 found very few of the animals in the city area.

Some 46 of the animals in the south of the city were culled for a controversial tree-planting scheme.

Councillor Neil Cooney, Communities, Housing and Infrastructure Committee, wrote to campaigners; his email reads in part:

“Any other practical non-lethal measures will also be looked at… There will be no management until a population survey is completed: we must look at the issue of population densities”

Due to loss of greenbelt land, deer and other wildlife have been forced out of their habitats. One of the largest and most controversial projects sees land at Loirston Loch released for commercial development. Previous councils had decreed the land should never be built on. A large road-building project elsewhere in the city is also destroying habitat.

Campaigner Suzanne Kelly said:

“We welcome Neil Cooney’s comments, but are concerned that in Aberdeen ‘management’ automatically seems to mean killing animals. The author of the report before the Committee is also the author of the report that led to the culling of 46 roe deer on Tullos Hill for a tree planting scheme – on a former rubbish tip which the Government says is unlikely to support a large-scale tree planting.  

“The scheme was supposed to be ‘cost-neutral’; it has cost over £600,000. Over 80% of citizens opposed this according to STV, community councils objected – but still the city pressed ahead.

“As to these road accident statistics, we’ve asked for the raw data and are awaiting it. The last spreadsheet I saw was in April. This included accidents in Aberdeenshire, and incidents which were not involving collisions. Police Scotland had been requested to supply data; this request is overdue.

“There are non-lethal ways to curtail deer populations and help prevent road accidents; the city could do more. They seem to want to shoot first and not ask questions. However, when you look at how many road accidents we have, the involvement of deer pales into insignificance.

“The report insists the city must uphold the law on deer management. We look forward to the city showing the same enthusiasm for upholding the law on improving air pollution on our roads, which include some of the worst statistics in Scotland.

“The report’s author also claims the city wants to improve biodiversity; this is a bit risible in the face of its recent planning decisions, and the threat to turn the city’s Harbour area into an off-limits private industrial harbour. Still, as the city has agreed no killing at least until a proper count is done, we see this as a victory.”

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[Aberdeen Voice accepts and welcomes contributions from all sides/angles pertaining to any issue. Views and opinions expressed in any article are entirely those of the writer/contributor, and inclusion in our publication does not constitute support or endorsement of these by Aberdeen Voice as an organisation or any of its team members.]

Jul 242015
 

With thanks to Richard Bunting.

TFL new office IMG_7803

Alex Walker, Managing Director of Ekopia (left) with Alan Watson Featherstone, Executive Director of Trees for Life, at the new eco-designed office in Findhorn

After more than 20 years at its current premises in Findhorn, Conservation charity Trees for Life is this week moving into a new environmentally friendly office based at the Findhorn Community near Forres in Moray.
The award-winning charity is moving to a brand new building that has been constructed to high ecological standards, thanks to financial assistance from the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund.

“This is a very important development for us. We are delighted to be moving into this new eco-friendly office, which will provide a warm, welcoming and modern space for our staff and volunteers to work in,” said Alan Watson Featherstone, Trees for Life’s Executive Director.

“The office’s greatly-reduced energy needs brings our working environment into line with the charity’s ecological principles. With its significantly larger size, the new building is also enabling us to increase staff numbers, to facilitate an expansion of our work to restore the Caledonian Forest”.

Situated behind Findhorn’s Universal Hall, the building is owned by Ekopia – a Findhorn-based community benefit society that has invested over £1 million in a range of community enterprises.

The office is heated by an air-source heat pump, powered by electricity from the Findhorn Community’s wind turbines – making the building fossil fuel free in terms of its heating.

Energy efficiency has been increased through high levels of insulation – with Warmcel insulation made from recycled paper fibre in the walls and ceiling, and Thermafleece sheep’s wool insulation under the floor. All of the windows are double-glazed.

Water usage has been minimised through low flush toilets, a solar panel on the roof provides a hot water supply, and interior walls have been painted with ecological, non-toxic Auro paint.

Trees for Life is dedicated to restoring the endangered Caledonian Forest in the Scottish Highlands to one of the UK’s wildest landscapes. The charity’s volunteers have helped to plant more than one million trees at dozens of locations across the Highlands, and Trees for Life has pledged to establish one million more trees by planting and natural regeneration by 2018.

For more information, see www.treesforlife.org.uk or call 01309 691292.

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Apr 032015
 

deer3picWith thanks to Suzanne Kelly.

A petition to examine issues surrounding Aberdeen’s Tullos Hill has gained sufficient public support for the city’s Petitions Committee to address the issues.

Campaigners were told today that they had exceeded the threshold of 250 signatures, and the city’s Petitions Committee will meet with the petitioners on 21 April.

Text of their petition can be found here http://committees.aberdeencity.gov.uk/mgEPetitionDisplay.aspx?Id=13 .

In May of 2011, campaigners wanted the deer spared and for Tullos Hill to be left as a meadow and the roe deer to be allowed to remain. The hill once had a field of dame’s violets, which a city official, Peter Leonard, dismissed as ‘garden escapees’. Campaigners argued that the flowers and the gorse were important habitat and should not have been removed.

The hill is a former industrial and domestic rubbish dumping ground with serious soil pollution issues. A ‘Tree for Every Citizen’ scheme was put up for public consultation, but it omitted there was a deer cull already planned for the tree planting. When the public found out about the cull, thousands signed petitions and several community councils objected as well.

STV reported that 80% of the city opposed the scheme. The convener of the Housing & Environment Committee, Liberal Democrat Aileen Malone, demanded that the public come up with £225,000 for fencing – or the deer would be shot. Animal welfare charities and organisations were alarmed at this unprecedented demand, and people were urged not to give into the demand.

Free of charge services were offered to show the city how to grow the trees using non-lethal methods – these were dismissed out of hand.    A spokesperson for the Scottish SPCA referred to the culling of the deer for the tree scheme as ‘abhorrent and absurd.’

The public were initially told the tree planting would be at no cost to them. However, a Freedom of Information request revealed that an expert C J Piper, was paid £72,212 for services to the tree-planting scheme. Other expenses include fencing, the cost of having the deer shot, and a previous failed planting on the same hill which saw the taxpayers returning £43,800 to Scottish Natural Heritage.

The campaigners want to know what all of the expenses are both historic and ongoing.

John Robins of Animal Concern said:

“Aberdeen City Council have all but wiped out a perfectly healthy herd of deer which had existed for generations on a piece of rough land which has never been suitable for anything else. Tullos Hill evolved into its own natural habitat and should have been valued and protected for what it was and not destroyed to fit in with the grandiose plans of petty politicians. It is extremely unlikely that any new woodland will survive on Tullos Hill. The Council should stop wasting public money and leave the area to nature – in this instance mother nature definitely knows best.”

Kelly, who has written several articles for Aberdeen Voice and a report, continued:

“People feel they were misled on several aspects of the scheme.  People do not know how much money is involved,  how safe or otherwise the soil on the hill is, and why more deer must be shot. 

“There may be very few deer left in the entire city according to a recent SNH count. We want to know how much tax money has gone on this scheme, we want no further culling, and we want the city to seek assurances from the SNH that we won’t see another £43,800 bill coming our way: the trees are covered by weeds in many places, no matter how many awards have been dished out.”

Background:

http://news.stv.tv/north/17223-campaigners-hand-over-petition-opposing-deer-cull-to-council/
https://aberdeenvoice.com/2011/05/you%E2%80%99re-shooting-yourself-in-the-foot-cults-cc-tells-malone/
http://suzannekelly.yolasite.com/

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Aug 092013
 

Mike Shepherd examines social and economic changes which can been seen to have a wide reaching environmental impact from the rain forest of Borneo to the toads of Bishops Loch.

In May this year I returned from Borneo after working there for nine months.

I was living in a city slightly larger than Aberdeen, and although located in Malaysia, over half the inhabitants there are ethnic Chinese.

My hotel apartment was in the Chinese district and I found myself one of only a handful of westerners living there.

The Malaysian people pride themselves on their scrupulous racial tolerance and never at any time did I feel uncomfortable living among them.

I soon made several Chinese friends and found myself quickly immersed in their way of life. I’ve been told that the Chinese of Borneo have preserved more of their age-old culture than is the case on the Chinese mainland, where modernisation and globalisation are changing things rapidly.

I felt a lot like a modern age Marco Polo as I learnt with great interest about subjects such as Taoism, Feng Shui and numerology. My Malaysian Chinese friends were pragmatic, extremely business focussed, and yet the most superstitious people I’d ever come across.

One morning in Borneo, I woke up smelling wood smoke. I looked out from the 17th floor of the apartment block where I lived, and saw smoke billowing over the low ridges to the east of the city. Billowing smoke is a common sight in this part of the world, and is the result of scrubland being burnt off in preparation for the laying out of palm oil plantations, or land for crops.

The scrubland is what remains after tropical rain forest has been chopped down. The tropical forest is disappearing in Borneo: one estimate puts the rain forest cover at less than 50%. The tropical hard wood is sold to countries such as India, and it’s a highly profitable business.

The sight and smell of the wood smoke upset me greatly. It’s a sign of how the tropical rain forest is dwindling and it’s also a health hazard. The smoke is carcinogenic, yet none of the authorities would do anything to stop it from drifting over the city. A taxi driver told me that on occasions the smoke in the city would become so dense that it would be almost impossible to drive safely.

Singapore was similarly  affected in June this year.

On the day that I first smelled wood smoke, I mentioned this to my Chinese friends over a beer in the evening. I made some comment about how sad it was that we should have to tolerate the toxic smoke, in the full knowledge of the loss to humanity of such a valuable resource as the tropical rain forest.

Not only were our lungs being assaulted but the “lung” that provided oxygen to the world was being destroyed piecemeal.

The biodiversity catastrophe taking place would impoverish the whole of humanity and not just the people in Borneo.

These comments were received in stunned silence.

Then one of my friends spoke in an angry tone:

“YOU PEOPLE. How can you come here and say things like that?” 

I was immediately alarmed, a subject of extreme sensitivity had clearly been broached. Not only that, the vehemence of the reply was totally out of place in a culture where there is a taboo against displaying strong emotions in public.

What followed was an explanation of what had upset them so much and I write here the gist of what they said to me.

The logging industry and palm oil plantations are major sources of employment in the area, together with the oil industry and a little bit of tourism. There is no manufacturing industry in Borneo; it’s too far off the shipping lanes to have got caught up in the tiger economy of Southeast Asia. Jobs in logging and palm oil provide income for the locals.

The alternative is the poverty that is all too visible in parts of the city. Although Malaysia is relatively prosperous, you can still find illegal shanty towns or ‘kampungs’, which are typically where immigrants from Indonesia and the Philippines live. The week after I arrived, an epidemic of cholera had broken out in a kampung in the neighbouring city; a sign of the very poor sanitary conditions in these places.

My friends had told me on other occasions about poverty in Southeast Asia. For example, the poor of Indonesia sustain themselves with what they call “second-hand rice”. This is boiled rice left over from cafes and restaurants which is treated by being left to dry in the sun. The rice is then broken up and bagged, ready to be sold very cheaply to those who can’t even afford fresh rice.

perhaps both sides of the argument are perfectly reasonable

As we sat drinking Tiger Beer in the local Chinese café, they asked me “Would you want us to be that poor by denying us jobs?” The subject was quickly changed and we found something a lot more jolly to talk about. Social harmony is highly valued in that part of the world.

In the final analysis, most people reading this in Aberdeen, I would guess, will probably agree with me; whereas most people in Borneo would take the opposing view. My take on this is that perhaps both sides of the argument are perfectly reasonable. It’s an example of how you can frame two distinct and opposing statements that are both equally valid and show impeccable internal logic.

I would still strongly concur with what I said, and yet I would also agree with my Chinese friends. I wouldn’t want them to suffer the deprivations of Asian poverty. Not them, not anybody.

How do you solve this dilemma? The region of Borneo I was working in, Sarawak, has a population of only 2.4 million. This is less than half the population of Scotland, yet Sarawak covers a large area. Perhaps it might be possible to achieve a sustainable economy that would provide work for the local population and still preserve what is left of the tropical rain forest?

Alas, this was not a topic for serious conversation in the Chinese café, it was just too naïve a suggestion to make in that part of the world. Rich and powerful people are making big money out of logging and they couldn’t care less about the environment. The mentality of exploiting any resources you can, to make money, is at any rate embedded in the local way of life at all levels, and few see any problem with that.

The threat of ever-present poverty is a big driver for this attitude.  Borneo is a simple case history that shows that without international effort to achieve a sustainable solution for the world’s environmental problems, the situation will only carry on until everything is gone.

What’s happening in Borneo is a story that is being repeated all over the tropics and elsewhere in the world. Let’s not be too smug: closer to home, it’s not too difficult to find similar examples of catastrophic loss of biodiversity.

One example I know about comes from the Bishops Loch in Parkhill near Dyce. Bishops Loch is about 9 acres in area and is named after the now ruined Bishop’s Palace located on the north bank of the loch. The Palace, in reality a small house- sized building, was owned by the medieval Bishop of Aberdeen.

The loch used to be well known for its large population of toads which could be heard croaking on a summer’s evening.  However, the introduction of the oil industry inadvertently wiped out the entire toad population.

The toads would overwinter in Parkhill Wood, a behaviour that involved migrating from the loch and crossing the adjacent B997 road.

This was not that hazardous a trip in the 1960s, but when oil company offices and warehouses opened up in Dyce in the 1970s, the B997 became a much busier road. It was being used as a popular rat run to get from the Bridge of Don to Dyce. The toad population started to plummet as more and more were run over by cars during their winter migration across the road.

A local resident contacted the then Grampian Council at the end of the 1970s and asked for a tunnel to be built under the road as a means of preserving the toad population. This was not taken seriously. No doubt the council officials felt they had better things to spend ratepayers’ money on than an escape route for toads. Economics tends to win out over the environment most of the time.

The world is living an unsustainable ‘jam today, bread tomorrow’ way of life. Our current standard of living is at the expense of an indeterminate future.  Here in Scotland, our municipal authorities have a combined debt of £11 billion and it is increasing fast, year-on-year. Loading debt is the only way they can manage their budget obligations.

It will be an unwelcome legacy to our children and grandchildren, who will just have to cope with it if they can. Likewise, we are unsustainably exploiting the environment and for those of us who don’t eat second-hand rice, we are doing reasonably comfortably out of it so far.

The wild things are going fast, be it in Borneo or Bishops Loch. Academic biologists actively discuss the idea that we are currently heading for a man-made mass extinction event.

There are too many people in the world. Our planet has coped with 7 billion people on the planet so far, and the numbers are increasing fast. Four babies are being born every second: 200,000 additional people are being added to the world’s population every day.

Modern technology and transport have allowed humans to cope with these enormous numbers; they would be impossible otherwise.  As a species we are coping after a fashion, albeit with enormous stress on an environment that hasn’t quite collapsed totally, not yet anyway. However, we are on our way to eating everything that can be eaten and stripping everything else bare too.

The biodiversity catastrophe in the world today is very real and it could easily lead to human catastrophe as well. Without awareness of the issue, and concerted action, we could all share the fate of the toads in Bishops Loch.

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