MADAM, We love and have used the Forest of Dean for family recreation for years. We enjoy walking and also ride mountain bikes, and wish to illustrate to you a nearby example of what may happen if the Forest of Dean, along with up to half of Britain's state-owned Forestry Commission land, is sold off to private enterprise, as the Coalition Government intends.

We used to cycle in an area of Forestry Commission land to the east of Hereford called West Wood. We usually parked up in a small layby just above Mordiford, and rode through West Wood on a long loop around Woolhope, taking in Common Hill and Haugh Wood.

One day, we turned up and there were big signs saying that the whole area was now out of bounds to everybody except walkers 'as long as they kept to footpaths'. However the only solitary legal footpath passes along the bottom of the hill.

Further investigation revealed that the forest had been sold to a private timber company, and public access was now strictly controlled due to Health and Safety concerns.

We haven't ridden there since, but there has been a local campaign and a Facebook page, but to all intents and purposes, the sale wiped away any 'rights' that locals and forest recreational users used to have, and the situation now is one of impasse. The picture nationally for such small-scale sell-offs is that the relaxed attitude to access ceases and public access in general is discouraged or prohibited.

Should the sale of Britain's woodland heritage go ahead, make no mistake that the purchasers will seek to monetise their new acquisitions, and we shall see asset-stripping in the form of wholesale tree-felling – probably for subsidised conversion into wood fuels, leisure parks, game shooting and all manner of pay-to-use facilities, which were formerly free and belonged to the public. Furthermore, nature conservation and the protection of bio-diversity ceases to be the fragile reality that it is, and becomes the sort of thing that appears only by reference as 'Greenwash' on corporate websites and balance sheets.

I would urge all readers to sign the online petition at http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/save-our-forests">www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/save-our-forests. There are currently well over 120,000 signatures, but many more are needed as we stand to lose the jewel of Britain's outdoor assets.

John Gartside, Ross