I refer to Helen Gee's letter regarding Staffordshire Wildlife Trust's management of Swineholes Wood in last week's Post & Times.

As Miss Gee points out, the trust has managed the wood for more than 30 years.

During much of that time it was carefully and sensitively managed by a group of committed and enthusiastic people under the guidance of a voluntary reserve manager and in consultation with the former owner, Mrs Crombie.

Sadly, after 18 years, due to work commitments, this manager had to resign and a new management structure was implemented within SWT using "paid professionals". Since then, in my opinion, a catalogue of problems have arisen at a number of its reserves.

The new management implemented its Ipstones Edge Nature Reserve Management Plan 2002-2007. The first local residents knew of its intentions was in 2004, when SWT employed foresters to remove the whole heart of Swineholes Wood.

These were mature Scots pine, oaks, rowan and birch trees. Beautiful oak trees more than 200 years old have also recently been ring-barked thus ensuring a slow death. Yet a detailed map of the site exists which shows the plants in this area to be non-moorland flora, typically wavy-hair grass, bilberry and a profusion of ferns.

This area was certainly not one which had become woodland since the 1960s/70s, but an area of mature trees which, now the trees are gone, has merely been invaded by bramble and weeds. To fell mature woodland in the hope that moorland plants are going to appear does not make good sense to us.

Local people were driven to form a protest group, Swineholes Wood Conservation Group. A petition exists, signed by hundreds of local people against any more tree felling.

At the Annual General Meeting of the Stafford branch of The Campaign For The Protection Of Rural England earlier this year, Guy Corbett-Marshall, director of SWT, gave a talk in which he stated that "the trust acquired small nature reserves and protected them from change" and that it also protected habitats, woodland being at the top of the list. Fine words, but not what we have seen at Ipstones Edge, nor the people at Gib Tor who have also been subjected to the hacking and burning.

Swineholes Wood had a unique combination; the county's finest moorland and upland woodland growing in relative harmony. The most gentle management was required to maintain the balance indefinitely.

I believe the Trust's management under Miss Gee has been invasive and the balance has been destroyed.

How can she claim to know better than the local people whose knowledge of and feelings for Swineholes Wood are much greater than her own?

Sylvia Plant

Former Wildlife Trust Member

Swineholes Wood Conservation Group, Winkhill