Oh bother! Nimbies do battle with council over Pooh's forest

A little part of Pooh Bear's wood was always reserved for Eeyore - it was a "sad and gloomy place," according to the author A A Milne, who set his adventures in Ashdown Forest where he lived.

Despite being an area of outstanding natural beauty and one of the most scientifically important landscapes in southern England, a mood of discontent seems to be pervading Pooh's wood far beyond the home of the melancholic donkey.

A project to restore the High Weald forest to its pre-war blend of heath and woodland by chopping down swathes of trees has prompted a furious response from locals. Some are calling for a campaign of civil disobedience to stop the felling. Protesters have threatened to chain themselves to trees while others are proposing to march on the offices of the forest's governing body, the Board of Conservators.

A recent meeting, attended by more than 100 angry residents saw recent work likened to the Nazi Holocaust while others compared the results of the clearances to the Somme. They appear unpersuaded by the official suggestion that Ashdown Forest takes its name from its origins as a hunting area rather than one covered in trees.

Rose Moore, who lives in Hartfield, the village at the centre of the area's Pooh legend, the multi-billion dollar rights to which are now owned by Disney, insists that those who oppose the felling programme are not "tree huggers".

Standing close to the Enchanted Place, at real Wrens Warren, Mrs Moore looks on sadly at a large area of former forest now reduced to stumps. She says many were reduced to tears when they saw the changes. Others have vowed never to return to once loved haunts, describing the loss of mature woodland as similar to being bereaved.

"It is a form of scientific fanaticism. They don't accept that many people feel an emotional attachment to this place. They say that there is a subjective idea of what is beautiful but I don't find stumps and something looking very like the Somme beautiful at all," she said.

Elizabeth Andersen, who recently returned to live in the forest, said she went into "shock" when she witnessed the impact of the recent felling programme. "I feel a sense of impotent rage. They seem to have got a whole lot of money to preserve insects but don't care about the trees or people," she said.

Ashdown Forest's conservation officer, Chris Marrable, admits the forest's owners, Sussex County Council, have been "conspicuously bad" at getting their message across.

The root of the problem, he says, is the advance of woodland into traditional heath areas after the Second World War, when returning soldiers gave up trying to scratch a living out of the forest. Whereas once hundreds of commoners used the wood and heath - their livestock obliging by chewing down young tree shoots - today there is only one commercial grazer.

Others who used to harvest the bracken and litter - the forest's heathers, grasses and rushes - simply gave it up in favour of paid employment. As a result the traditional 60:40 ratio between heath and wood became unbalanced and if allowed to grow unchecked, the entire forest would be wooded within 75 years, it is claimed.

The upsurge in felling follows extra cash provided by the Government's higher-level environmental stewardship scheme, but Mr Marrable says it is part of a programme of work that has been going on for 30 years.

No one involved in the row is in dispute that the area is unique; the heathland is home to an abundance of flowering heather and harbours rare plants such as petty whin and marsh gentia. They support more than 50 per cent of some UK insect species.

But similar debates are raging between locals and the authorities at other heathland areas in the New Forest and Surrey. The battle of the 100 Acre Wood looks far from being settled.

The Complete Winnie-the-Pooh, A A Milne, Egmont, 1926

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