Ok, so it’s partly my galloping middle age that leaves me prone to increasingly frequent Victor Meldrew moments, but sometimes I can’t help raging against incomprehensible own-goals from conservationists, which serve only to reinforce other people’s prejudices about us.

My role in the Neroche area of the Blackdown Hills means I have connections into lots of different disciplines and perspectives on the land.  I often find myself acting as a clearing house between them, fielding enquiries, and just recently I had an email from an archaeologist in the local historic environment service.  He was working on a project to reconstruct a prehistoric log-boat – a dug-out canoe of the type excavated on the Somerset Levels – and he was looking for a big tree trunk to use.  I couldn’t supply anything from our forest soon enough so I forwarded his request to a few other woodland managers.

One of them, from the operations team of a well known large woodland conservation charity who I won’t name, replied thus:  “Unfortunately as we manage our woods for their conservation benefit we don’t generate much timber.  On the occasions where we do generate timber, we aim to leave it on site as logs have considerable ecological value as deadwood; providing habitat, food and shelter for many species of plants and animals.”

Ah, right.  So woodland conservation doesn’t generate anything – just rotting logs?  Now, I know and you know that woodlands managed primarily for conservation are not timber factories.  And we know that deadwood habitat, both standing and lying, is a vital component of the woodland ecosystem.  But in my humble experience the world of woodland management is not black and white, between KielderForest factories on the one hand and Bialowieza wildernesses on the other.  The implication of the statement above is that conservation management does not, by definition, generate a product.

In truth, there would be no semi-natural ancient woodlands left on this crowded island if they had not been generating products – consistently and sometimes pretty intensively – for centuries.  It is the fact that they have ceased, by and large, to generate products, and have become associated with economic redundancy and irrelevance, that they have suffered so much.  To see a high-profile protagonist for UK woodlands peddling the myth that conserved woodlands generate no timber is exasperating and depressing.

If conservationists have any sense at all they have to see the importance of demonstrating that wild habitats can be productive, as well as wild, diverse and beautiful.  That is not just about satisfying a bullish free market expectation that in these recessionary times, everything must contribute to GDP.  It is also – more importantly – about making wild places relevant to society.  Sure, I think there should be non-intervention areas of land where human expectations of productivity do not hold sway.  But fundamentally shouldn’t we work for the land to be inclusive?  Managed with respect and wholeness, land can indeed feed us, warm us, shelter us and teach us, while also remaining rich, healthy and full of life.  It is a question of how we harvest, not whether we harvest.