Caroline Lucas’s call to increase the area given national park status (Protecting nature is vital to tackle the climate crisis, Journal, 5 December) is very welcome. But it is important that the new areas selected do not replicate the upland bias of our present parks, which reflects the enthusiasm of upland devotees in the quangos of the 1950s and 60s. New parks in places such as Dorset, Gloucestershire, Kent and Herefordshire could act as testbeds for much-needed ways of combining farming and forestry systems to enhance conservation, wildlife, landscape and recreation. For instance, grants to landowners to plant trees could be combined with a requirement to provide public access over the woodlands of the future.
Marion Shoard
Author of This Land is Our Land, Strood, Kent
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