Save our Forests – share your campaign ideas

Our Save our Forests petition is growing really fast. Over 30,000 people have signed it in less than a week.

We’re proving that the public don’t want our forests sold off. If enough of us get involved in this campaign, we can make the government back down.

Our number one priority this week has to be to make sure that the petition keeps on growing. People power is our best bet for stopping the forest sell-off. The more of us there are involved, the more likely we are to win.

But what else should we be getting ready to do? 38 Degrees works because thousands and thousands of us work together. So we need to start discussing what else we should be doing together on this campaign.

For a serious sell-off of the England’s forests to go ahead, the government would need to get the law changed. That means they need MPs to vote for their plans. So what can we do together to push MPs to promise to protect our forests? Would you be prepared to write to your MP, or pay them a visit? Should we be targeting some MPs more than others? Which ones?

The government, and the private companies that would profit from any sale, will probably try to run a slick PR operation to persuade the public there is nothing to worry about. What should we be doing to raise awareness and spread the word? Should we be raising money to produce adverts? Should we all be putting posters in our windows or bumper stickers on our cars? How about all writing letters to a local papers warning about the plans? Organising local events to get the press involved?

These are just some initial ideas to get the conversation going. Please add your own by commenting on this post.

UPDATE: since this post was put up, both the Welsh and Scottish governments have expressed their opposition to selling off the forests. It looks like, since forestry is a devolved matter, for now at least the main threat is to forests in England. We’ve updated this post accordingly.