§ Mr. Ron Daviesasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list the dates and locations of the occurrence of catastrophic windthrow events in British forestry plantations since 1945, giving the area affected in each case.
§ Mr. John MacKayThere have been three major gales since 1945 that have caused extensive damage to forests. These occurred in January 1953 in north east Scotland, in January 1968 in central Scotland and in January 1976 in mid Wales, the midlands and East Anglia.
As the severity and pattern of damage varied greatly, statistics were kept on the basis of the volumes of windthrown timber, rather than on the area of forest affected.