It's a bit more complicated than that. We (the public) may technically own it, but it's the government who hold the ground, the FC are the tenant and therefore control it, fishing and sporting rights, policy, shaped by direction of the government of the day and executing policy, in the public interest.
And it's that last part, "the public interest", thats open to interpretation, it's the government that decide what the public interest is and therefore dictates broad policy objectives that should mesh with over all commercial viability, fortunately in scotland the scots government element is more open to scrutiny that the old pre devolution scottish office.
However there's a layer of officialdom and NGO interest between us the public and the government policy makers, other government departments quangos focus groups and charities, all lobbying, all acting to influence policy in their own interest.
Then once policy's been decided there's a significant implementation lag, from the decisions being made to seeing the difference on the ground. That can take years to see in some instances.
If it's decided that no camping in certain quarters would be in the public interest on Commission ground, then that'll be that.
They can and do.
For sure, however we're still living with FC 1970's policy objective legacies, not all would be considered "sensible" in the modern context but we (read FC) are generating £1billion per annum from forestry in Scotland, from that era.
A pal of mine was talking about his last job working for a contractor in mid 1982, he'd planted almost a million trees from the late 70's until then (I planted a quarter million myself in the 80's) and was about to depart for a trip to south america having secured a plot of land for his house and saved enough for the trip. His boss convinced him that a spot of weeding in about some recently planted ground would be the perfect run down ahead of his trip.
Despite my pal being a little mercenary when it comes to money he lasted 3 days on account of this plantation having been established on the site of a relatively fresh cut ancient mixed birch oak and pine wood, one of the birches they reckoned was over two hundred years old (had a bit of rot so it could have been older than 200) and a couple of pines that would have possibly witnessed Coll of the Cattle's reeved herds passing the spot.
Despite a shift in policy in 81 or 82, this type of mixed woodland, so valued today, was still being felled to accommodate new mono block plantations right through the 80's, due to implementation lag, forestry generally being a long term game.
