How a Welsh village saved its forest … and its future

How a Welsh village saved its forest … and its future In an edited extract from her latest book, Hazel Sheffield sets out a new blueprint for community stewardship I t was a Saturday in February 2020 when the flood came. It had been a wet winter, so wet it seemed that before the month was out, the brown trout of the River Taff might be washed clean out into Cardiff Bay before the fishing season had even begun. But this is Wales . People are used to a spot of rain. No one realised how bad it would get. For two days, it hammered on the windows of the houses at the top of the South Wales Valleys, where people tucked in their children before a sleepless night. It poured into the rivers at the bottom. By the time the rain departed again, many people would be standing in water up to their knees. A history of coal mining had left the sides of the valley covered with a monocrop of larch, planted for pit props. The forests became overgrown and impenetrable. Under the coal board, villagers were warned off entering them. Before the Pentre floods, Natural Resources Wales, which took over from the Forestry Commission in Wales in 2013, stepped in with felling licences, drawing the ire of dogwalkers and hikers when they sent in their machines. As the authorities felled and winched the trees, dead material and branches snapped and dropped on to the forest floor. The high street in Pentre had never flooded. But that night in February, the rain was unable to find its natural course. With a crack barely audible against the downpour, the banks broke and the water gushed towards the houses below. An inquiry was promised. No wrongdoing was found. But the people of the valleys knew the land with its knotted forests, old mines and ancient springs. They feared the felling done by public bodies in their name. The summers were getting warmer, the winters wetter. Diseases thrived on the damp, stressed trees. A different way was needed to manage the valleys. Not by profiteering businessmen, nor...