Search under way for jubilee wood

30 July 2011 Last updated at 01:33 GMT The ambitious 500-acre woodland would take three or four years to complete The Woodland Trust is searching for a 500-acre site to plant half-a-million trees in a flagship woodland that will celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

The ideal location would be an accessible location near a large population, a spokeswoman said.

The team hoped to begin planting trees on the chosen site in the autumn.

As well as planting the jubilee wood, the trust is also looking for volunteer hosts for a further 59 60-acre "diamond woods" across the UK.

"While the jubilee wood is going to be a national, living monument to the Queen, we also want it to be used and enjoyed by people," explained Georgina Mcleod, the trust's head of jubilee woods.

She added that apart from the site being near to people, accessible and suitable for woodland creation, there were very few criteria.

"As we will be buying this site, we do not mind who we buy it from - a local authority, private landowner, whoever - as long as we can afford it," Ms Mcleod told BBC News.

The 500-acre (200ha) project is earmarked to cost in the region of ?5m, she estimated.

"This includes buying the land, planting the trees and other logistics too, such as putting in footpaths and engaging the local community.

"The total will also pay for some sort of jubilee interpretation; how do we make this site really, really special? How do we make it somewhere that people want to visit and will be a memorable legacy to the Queen."

An estimated 500,000 trees will be planted over a three-to-four year period. They will be primarily native broadleaf species, such as ash, oak, rowan, birch and hornbeam.

60-60 vision

The Woodland Trust is also looking to establish a further 59 smaller woodlands to complement the large, flagship one.

"This is where there might be local authorities or landowners who would want to host one of these. We are going to create the huge 500-acre one, and we want 59 other locations to create a 60-acre (24ha) woodland each," Ms Mcleod explained.

She said that they had about 20 sites confirmed and were still looking for more offers.

On a smaller scale still, Ms Mcleod explained that the trust would be giving away free tree planting packs to local communities that wanted to establish a wooded area to commemorate the jubilee. In total, the project was looking to plant six million trees.

The project is thought to be the first of its kind. However, a committee was established to oversee tree-planting to mark the coronation of King George VI in 1936.

A 642-page book was published in 1939 that listed the location and species of every single tree that was planted, not just in the UK but in other parts of the British Empire.

Ms Mcleod explained that the Queen Mother was the patron of the 1936 campaign, and that Princess Anne had agreed to follow in her grandmother's footsteps and be the patron of the 2012 jubilee project.

The tree-planting is expected to get under way from November, when this year's planting season would normally start.

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Under the Moon

22 July 2011 Last updated at 10:26 GMT By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News The near-term future for Nasa is a "public-private partnership" to develop the next generation of spacecraft As space shuttle Atlantis's wheels touched down in Florida on Thursday, the shuttles' epoch of defining manned spaceflight came to a close. What comes next for the US space agency is a new way of running things - but not everyone is happy about it.

For now, American astronauts and their long-time partners in Canada, Europe and Japan will depend on Russian Soyuz vehicles to get to orbit and the job of developing the shuttles' successors will be carried out in the private sector.

Much of the news coverage of the end of this era has looked wistfully back on the shuttles' accomplishments, principal among them the development of the International Space Station.

As for what's next, Nasa administrator Charles Bolden is just one of many at the agency insisting that the "future of human spaceflight is bright".

However, those rosy views of both past and future are not shared by everyone.

One concern is the sweeping job cuts at the agency. But former Nasa administrator Mike Griffin and space policy expert John Logsdon say that Nasa's grip on leadership in space has this week been lost - possibly forever.

"When you push aside all the puffery and high-flying political announcements, with the landing of Atlantis, the human spaceflight programme of the US will come to an end for the indefinite future," Professor Griffin told BBC News.

"The Obama administration has made the decision that the primary means of transporting crew to orbit will be with fledgling commercial firms, who have yet to build and deliver a product."

Prof Griffin has been a vocal opponent of the Obama administration's handling of Nasa's future

What has been pitched by Nasa as a brief pause in US manned spaceflight "business as usual" is a catastrophe, Prof Griffin says - possibly an unrecoverable one.

Professor Logsdon, a former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, agrees.

"We've gotten ourselves into a rather stupid situation of ending shuttle flights without a clear path to a reaplacement and without a sense of the long-range future of the programme. It's really rather deplorable," he told BBC News.

"I was a member of board that investigated the Columbia accident in 2003 and we said in our report the lack of a shuttle replacement was a failure of national leadership. Here we are eight years later and we still don't have a shuttle replacement," Prof Logsdon said.

"That's a failure, an embarrasment, that we have to depend on Russian taxi services [to ferry astronauts to the ISS] for a number of years, but my complaint is that we've seen this coming for years and haven't done enough about it. We put ourselves into this situation."

Although Prof Logsdon issued a scathing account of leadership issues in a recent essay in the Washington Post, he said the whole heritage of the space shuttle may have contributed to the current situation.

"The mistake was building a particular design for the shuttle that cost too much to operate and became a burden on the programme... and then building a 30-year programme around that particular design," Prof Logsdon told BBC News.

"This design was chosen while we were still doing Apollo - and there was a kind of hubris that Nasa could do anything and do it successfully. I think it became clear within the first three or four years of operating the shuttle that it was going to be extremely fragile, extremely expensive and carry with it very high risks."

'Shaping the game'

For Prof Griffin, the most insidious aspect of Nasa's current situation is a strategic one. He said current rank-and-file Nasa employees shared that view even as Atlantis was being launched on her final journey.

"They're obviously out of jobs when the shuttle lands - a lot of them are already gone. But most of the people I spoke to at the launch were not actually concerned about their own prospects; their thoughts were of dismantling the teams, the loss of capability. I share those feelings, I think it's upsetting. I regard it as a mistake."

Only at the end of the International Space Station's tenure will the US future in space become clear

He argues vehemently that a clear technical superiority in space confers a tremendous geopolitical advantage back home.

"Very few investments on the part of society yield as much impact as an investment in human spaceflight. Our capability to operate on the frontier - in fact to define that frontier - shapes the game in ways that redound to our advantage in the future."

He imagines a future scenario in which the US and Western powers may not have the capability to return to the Moon, or go further - but countries such as China do.

"Who then exerts power and influence? Who do you think other nations will want to do deals with, which nation will be regarded as technologically superior, the most advanced, the most capable, the one that holds sway in world affairs?

"It's impossible to conclude anything other than the fact that the capability to accomplish great things in human spaceflight is in fact strategic."

For his part, Prof Logsdon said that hope for leadership in space may not yet be lost.

"America might lose its position, but that's still a choice to be made," he said.

"The alternative is to take the actions now and in the next few years to get over this embarrassing period, re-establish good US access to low-Earth orbit - but more importantly develop the systems that put us in a leadership position in the 2020s and beyond."

The irony is that the space shuttles, for all their accomplishments, may have painted Nasa and the US into the corner that it now finds itself.

Prof Logsdon said: "[The shuttle] did remarkable things, it's a remarkably capable technological achievement, but we used it too long, failed to replace it when its problems became evident, and so it leaves in my mind a very mixed heritage."

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'Bizarre' seal plans under fire

16 June 2011 Last updated at 09:27 GMT By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News Harbour seals are declining around Scotland as a whole, for unknown reasons The Scottish government is coming under fire from environmental groups over plans to protect coastal sites used by only half of the nation's seals.

Numbers of harbour (or common) seals are declining, and campaigners say not protecting all the sites where they haul themselves onto land is "bizarre".

The government says it wants a balance that does not impact "other sustainable activities around the coast".

Its consultation on seal haul-out sites ends next week.

In the sites it designates, seals would be protected from "harrassment", under measures contained in the Marine Act passed last year.

The Scottish government is keen to leave space for industries such as fish farming to develop

But Vassili Papastavrou, a biologist with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw), said protecting sites used by only half of the seals was "bizarre".

"The government suggests that allowing intentional harassment of seals on about half of their haul-out sites is part of some kind of 'balance' between seals and other sustainable activities," he said.

"But how could an activity that forces a top predator from the local ecosystem ever meet criteria for 'sustainability'?"

These "sustainable" activities could include industries such as fish-farming.

Elaine Murray, Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Dumfriesshire, fought to have haul-out sites recognised in the Marine Act, and is concerned that only half of the seals would be covered.

"This is very odd - it seems to me to be contrary to the intention of the Act to protect only 50% of the common seal haul-out sites - especially when it's the population of common seals which is a cause for concern," she told BBC News.

"To my recollection, there was no discussion on limiting the number of haul-out sites covered by the harassment offence when this was being discussed during the passage of the Act."

Balance issue The harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) is found on the shores of the UK and other northern European countries, down the east and west coasts of North America, and on the east coast of Russia and Japan.

Globally, it is not threatened, with numbers estimated at five to six million.

But in northern Scotland, numbers have declined sharply - by about 60% during the last decade in Orkney and Shetland.

The other species that lives around Scottish shores, the grey seal (Halichoerus grypus), has expanded in recent decades.

The reasons behind these trends, and whether the fortunes of the two species are linked, are not well understood.

Data on Scotland's seal population is compiled by Callan Duck from the Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU) at St Andrews University.

He told BBC News that "it would probably be a good idea" to protect all the sites where harbour seals haul themselves onto land, given the population shrinkage.

Seals haul themselves onto land for a number of reasons, including reproduction

The government asked SMRU to draw up a list of priority sites for protection, and this document - seen by BBC News - makes clear that the decision to aim for 50% coverage was the government's.

"Enough sites were identified to contain at least 50% of each Seal Management Area's most recent count of harbour and grey seals," it reads.

"The Scottish Government decided that this would offer a good balance between maximising protection while minimising possible impacts on other sustainable activities around the coast."

The provisional list contains 146 haul-out sites, including 101 used by harbour seals.

The consultation document says it is "intended to provide a focus for discussion.

"It may be that some stakeholders will wish to suggest additional sites be added to the list for consideration or, alternatively, to suggest that some sites currently on the list should be removed."

The consultation closes on Tuesday 21 June, and Elaine Murray is urging people concerned by the plans to send their comments to the Scottish government by then.

A government spokeswoman said all responses would be welcomed.

"The draft list of seal haul-outs sites set out in the consultation paper sought to record those containing the highest concentrations of each species of seal," she said.

"This list was considered a useful starting point for the consultation, but the latter makes very clear that the list is not fixed and may be increased or reduced following consideration of consultation responses."

But Callan Duck is also keen to secure more protection for seals at European level.

"All cetaceans have been designated as protected species by the EU - seals don't have the same protection, even though they're considerably less numerous than some cetacean species," he said.

"So a more fundamental question is: why don't they have that same protection? Why are they second-class citizens?"

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