Sir – Biofuel enthusiasts, conservation volunteers, or well-meaning landowners may be further encouraged to open up the canopy in Oxfordshire’s woodlands by your article on sustainable management (Weekend, October 15).

However, research has shown that the “neglect” that some people see in unmanaged woodlands is actually highly beneficial to a large number of species — indeed, probably to the majority of native British species.

Some of this research on coppicing, removal of deadwood, and the damaging effects which spread from gaps was done near Oxford (including Wytham, Little Wittenham, Bernwood and Brasenose woods). Bluebells and some other plants might like to be bathed in sunlight in tidy woods, but the vast majority of species which comprise biodiversity do not.

Try finding rare mosses, lichens, bats or insects which eat dead wood in the sort of managed woodlands you illustrate.

Deadwood in particular is hugely important to true woodland species.

There is a move in many parts of the world, including Scotland, to “rewild” areas, and thus rectify some of the results of exploitation and mistakes.

Sadly, we must accept that sustainability is generally an illusion caused by looking at too few types of organism.

It will not be helpful to future generations to have driven most of our native wildlife away — and most ironic if it is done in the name of environmental improvement!

Clive Hambler, Cowley