The forestry machinery extracting trees on the Hurtwood is terrifyingly efficient, mega-expensive kit.

The hydraulic arm’s enormous claws close round a tree trunk near the ground. A split second later, the in-built saw slices through the trunk and the tree hovers in the air, sways forward and is caught again by the claws. In one deft movement the branches are stripped and the naked trunk sawn in three.

It literally takes a few seconds to convert a living tree to a neat pile of timber.

The massive timber piles by the reservoir on Radnor Road and the Roman Temple at Farley Heath bear witness to the huge amount of mature commercial forest on the Hurtwood, managed by the Albury and Shere Manor Estates. And the reason for the scale of the logging operation this year is just that – the maturity of the plantations.

The trees being felled were planted either after the Second World War or in the 1960s and they are a ripe commercial timber crop. The fact that so many of the Hurtwood trees were planted at the same time has posed a real problem for the estates, but even so, only one tenth of the forest is being harvested.

“In 2005 we developed a new management plan for the woodland because the trees were of a very even age and were beginning to come to harvestable size,” explained Alex Wilks, the Woodlands Manager for Shere Manor Estate.

“If we did nothing, then in 20 years’ time we would be faced with having to chop down vast areas of woodland in one big lump because it is a commercial timber crop. The trees here grow very slowly, half the speed they do in the Weald, and we drew up a 10 year plan with the Forestry Commission under the Woodland Grant Scheme to look at restructuring the woodland. The aim is to make the woodland sustainable with greater bio diversity.”

Handa Bray said: “The benefits to the Hurtwood environment are to increase its biodiversity and encourage natural regeneration of broadleaved trees in addition to the Scots pine.

“The Estate's carefully phased forestry programme will ensure a variety of ages and species of trees, and will let light and air into areas of the Hurtwood which will benefit the trees, the landscape - and access for Friends and visitors. Wait a year or two, and look out for tiny saplings - or look around the areas which were clear felled a few years ago, and see how many oaks and pines and other species are already beginning to be visible - and imagine them towering over the Hurtwood in 50 or 100 years time!”

Alex Wilks said: “We started carrying out compartment felling in 2006, taking out some of the older bigger trees and develop woodland with more unevenly aged plantations so they become more diverse in terms of commercial timer crops and have trees of different ages.

“That means you also develop ground flora and create different habitats for birds and insects. We have clear felled some areas because the trees are all of the right age and then you start to see a carpet of mostly Scots pine and beech and birch seedlings coming through.

“The thinning is a big problem as the soil is shallow and the trees left often blow over, but in the younger plantations it makes everything look much lighter. The felling is pretty intensive now and will be for the next 12 months or so and then it will quieten down again as most of the clear felling will then have been done.”

The tree best suited to the Hurtwood is the Scots pine but up by the windmill at Pitch Hill the soil is also suited to sweet chestnut and beech, so these species have been carefully planted on Windmill Plain, instead of leaving trees to self seed.

Look carefully around the Hurtwood and you can also see small squares with protective fencing to keep out deer. These are control patches to see the extent to which deer graze and destroy tree seedlings. So far the experiment shows that the deer help control the invasive birch seedlings as well as damaging the pine.

Michael Baxter, Albury Estate Manager, faced the same problem with his part of the Hurtwood . “We have just about got to the end of the felling now,” he said. “We were thinning out some of the younger plantations around the Roman Temple. They are a mix of pine, larch and Douglas fir. The chipwood goes to LC Energy for wood fuel and the big stuff goes to a sawmill in Shropshire or Norfolk.

“Some are first thinnings of trees planted after the 1987 hurricane, others are second, third or fourth thinnings of trees planed in the 1960s. It gives the remaining trees space to grow on and better biodiversity underneath.”