Free firewood - the law
By Daniel Butler: author and forager
We have seen in past blogs that British law effectively allows anyone to gather flowers, fruit, foliage and fungi (the ‘four ‘F’s’) for personal use (Mushrooms and the law (1/5) — Fungi Forays). Many assume this also applies to firewood, but this is generally untrue.
Nothing beats a roaring free fire
Photo: Author’s own
To be fair, the misunderstandings are generally based on two factors. The first is that fallen timber often looks like no more than ‘tree litter’ – messy detritus which is the equivalent of nature’s fly-tipping. People then assume picking it up is effectively good citizenship: cleaning up mess, unpaid.
The reality is that virtually all trees in Britain are effectively cultivated. Even our oldest forests were man-planted and almost all are managed. This means that, unlike wild plants and fungi, they can be legally owned. As a result, even wind-damaged fallen timber belongs to the landowner. If this potential firewood has a value for you, it might also be important to the landowner – either as timber or a wildlife resource. Thus taking it without permission is, technically, theft.
The second misunderstanding is linked to the Charter of the Forest (1217) which gives rights to gather firewood on common land. After five centuries of enclosures and development, very little of this remains and even then are not quite as simple as many imagine. Where they do still exist, there can be limits on how much may be collected. Again, this is relatively academic: the last commons have few trees, so little fallen timber.
Forestry operations leave a lot of waste
Photo: Author’s own
All is not lost: trees need management to stay healthy. This is expensive, rarely cost-effective and produces loads of low-grade waste timber which is worth less than the maintenance costs. Even when felling mature trees, British timber struggles to compete on quality with Scandinavian softwood or German or French oak. Much less than half the biomass from even our best-managed conifer plantations can go for planks or even pulp, while that from broadleaf woodland is generally fit only for firewood. Processing and transport costs mean it has little or no value and it is often cheapest to chip the waste and leave it on site.
Another interesting note is that until about 25 years ago the then Forestry Commission issued cheap licences for members of the public to collect waste timber from clear-felled areas. The system was abused, however, and after a while permits became weight-restricted and chainsaws were banned. More recently, as fossil fuel prices soared, managed plantations found felled stacks of timber waiting for collection were being pillaged. This led to the end of the licence system and now most conifer woodland are sealed off with padlocked gates.
This should not taken as discouragement, however. The abundance of waste means approaching landowners or contractors with a polite request for waste timber generally gets a favourable response. Indeed, you can often get it cut to manageable lengths (within reason).