Beware the well-intentioned ecologist:

• There has long been an argument against planting pine forests (which have often been used because their relatively quick growth allows them to be more speedily harvested for building materials) at the expense of slower growing deciduous trees.
• The density of planting associated with such artificial forests has tended to stop other flora and fauna growing accidently. Artificially planted conifer forests have therefore become associated with the exclusion of 'native' species and a more varied habitat. Pines therefore have developed a bad name with environmentalists.
• However an argument against planting a forest of pines is not the same as an advocacy of the destruction of mature pines trees on environmental grounds or on those of ecological diversity. I am not aware of any scientists who argue for the felling of mature pines.
• The Mature pines at Marlhill Copse are protected by Tree Preservations Orders or the equivalent (it is a conservation area). Therefore any advocacy of the destruction of such protected pines because of lack of worth should be made openly and honestly (and rigorously backed up with scientific evidence) to the City Council and not done so by an expedient ruse of agreeing to the airport's intention (which appears to be made for a totally different motivation of profit from airport expansion). Furthermore logic would dictate that the felling of pines elsewhere (in Southampton and the rest of the UK) would also be advocated by such a misguided approach.
• It is bizarre to think that the large Monterey Pines at Marlhill Copse were growing when Charles Darwin published 'On the Origin of Species' (1859). One of the groundbreaking elements of his writing and research was not to use 'teleological' argument: evolution is not directed by some force or design. Ecologists take note. At its starkest, there is no good or bad within evolution it just happens and one should not try to second guess the results of evolution within planetary terms by valuing one species/ organism more than another. Less starkley, human societies have always manipulated nature. Part of human adaptation is its adaptability within a generation- through greater capacity to change behaviour than any other animal. Antibiotics and mosquito eradication programmes, for example, obviously save many lives and cannot be regarded as bad in human terms.
• This argument is very relevant to the very restricted focus that some ecologists have bought to the pines at Marlhill Copse. This been compounded by a misunderstanding of evolution. Marlhill Copse is very special precisely because it has been left unmanaged for so long. It is 'looking after' itself. A natural process of evolution has no concerns about human aesthetics or tidyness. It is clear that different species would eventually grow if the large pines were removed. However the Marlhill Copse we now know would be quickly lost without a chance to adapt slowly. It would not gradually change though the inevitable loss of the individual Monterey pines through death & decay. Rapid change (mass felling) will have rapid consequences to wildlife that has adapted to the status quo at Marlhill Copse. In principle this is equivalent to the effects on other wildlife to the very quick introduction of the mink, coypu and gray squirrel into this country by humans.
• There is a world of difference between the principle of enhancing diversity when creating new forests or new public open spaces and the approach required in preserving a mature and functioning rarity such as Marlhill Copse. It is special because it has not been interfered with by ecologists or woodland managers. Indeed its very rarity is likely to make the ecologists and woodland managers untrained in what's best for Marlhill Copse. Let it be!