Sign of the times: Leo Houlding, left, and Sir Chris Bonington, second left, join the Whinlatter speakers, including Lord Clark, centre

A rally originally intended to protest at forest sell-offs turned into a victory celebration.

An estimated 500 people gathered at Whinlatter Forest in the Lake District to hear two of Britain’s most celebrated mountaineers lend support to the campaign against coalition Government plans to sell of Forestry Commission land.

Sir Chris Bonington, 76-year-old veteran of numerous mountaineering expeditions and Everest summiteer, warned that pressure must be kept up to avoid losing the 15 per cent of forest and woodland the Government had already earmarked for sale.

And Leo Houlding, 46 years his junior, warned the Government it could not just ‘pawn them off to private interest groups’.

The rally, which included speeches from Keith Fitton from the Osprey Project, former Forestry Commission chair Lord Clark of Windermere, Jack Ellerby from Friends of the Lake District and local MPs Jamie Read and Tony Cunningham had originally been planned as an attempt to prevent the sale of state-owned woodland in England. It turned into a celebration of the Government’s decision to abandon plans to sell off all the public forests, outlined in a humiliating u-turn statement by Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman in the House of Commons on Thursday.

Proposals to sell off 258,000ha (637,532 acres) in England managed by the Forestry Commission attracted cross-party criticism, with ministers being accused of ‘environmental vandalism’, and a huge outcry from the general public.

More than half a million people signed a national online 38 Degrees Save Our Forests petition while more than 1,000 joined the Save Lakeland’s Forests Facebook groups. Nearly 500 have been following the Lakeland campaign on Twitter and more than 1,500 took part in a rally at Grizedale.

Sir Chris Bonington warned of the importance of keeping up pressure as the separate plans to sell off 15 per cent of public woodland under the Comprehensive Spending Review have only been suspended pending an independent review, and sell-offs could commence as soon as the autumn.

Lord Clark explained that the 15 per cent of the Forestry Commission estate the Government was still planning to sell was expected to amount to 30 to 40 per cent of the public woodland within the Lake District.

He said those under threat stretched right across Cumbria from the woods of Armathwaite in the East, to Blengdale in the West, and from Dodd in the north to Chapel House in the South.

Leo Houlding who, like Sir Chris, lives on the edge of the Lake District, said: “The extent of this campaign, and the public vote of confidence in the Forestry Commission, should prompt it to improve the quality of its service, increase rights of access and ultimately not just be a tool of forest management, but a custodian and guardian of our public land.”

Jack Ellerby thanked the thousands who have backed the campaign, and pledged to continue the fight for the region’s woodland until assurances had been received that Lakeland’s public forests would be protected for future generations.