A FORMER Forestry Commission ranger has said he is dismayed at plans to privatise the region’s woodland.

Brian Walker, 59, worked for the organisation in North Yorkshire and County Durham for 34 years before retiring in December.

Mr Walker, who now lives near Pickering, North Yorkshire, was one of the first people in the country to become a Forestry Commission recreation ranger in 1976.

His career took him to Hamsterley Forest, near Bishop Auckland, before taking up a role on the North York Moors.

Mr Walker said he was worried that the decision to sell-off forests will come back to haunt future generations.

“The forests have become public property and it’s not right that in the future the public may not have a say in them,” he said.

“To me it seems counter productive and against what the Big Society is about.

“The decision has nothing to do with managing the environment or doing the best thing for the people, it is about party politics.

“I am not a political person, but I am totally dismayed by it all.”

The Forestry Commission was set up by the Government in the wake of the First World War to manage the production of timber in the country. However, Mr Walker said the group has evolved.

“By the Sixties, the Forestry Commission’s role had changed to protecting and making the most of what we’ve got, as well as the logging side of it,” he said. “We have evolved more than any other Government department.

“The profit made by the Forestry Commission is not cash profit, but it is seen in the environment.

A private company has to make profit and will they have the money to take care of those tiny elements that make forests like Hamsterley so special? How many private companies will even appoint an environmental officer?

“In North Yorkshire we have a bird group with about 60 members who regularly work with the Forestry Commission to protect the environment.

“That’s a team of 60 ornithologists helping out the scientists working behind the scenes. Will you get that with a private company?”