A mass tree-planting programme is to restore some of the glories of the British landscape progressively stripped by intensive agriculture, with a tree for every one of the country’s 64m people.
The Woodland Trust is to reintroduce hedges and copses onto farmland over the next decade, starting with the areas of Suffolk and Essex most affected by ash dieback, before continuing across the rest of the lowlands.
Announcing its plans, Austin Brady, director of conservation, said large expanses of the countryside had become a “no-man’s land” for wildlife because of lack of tree cover and added: “We are not trying to turn the clock back but, if we lose more trees, it ceases to be a natural landscape. In parts of the country, the ecosystem is on the brink of collapse.”
A total of 20m trees will revive the country’s hedges and farmland, softening the appearance of bare fields and providing green pathways for wildlife including bats, butterflies and pine martens. Breaking up huge “prairies” with hedges and stands of trees will also reduce crop damage and soil run-off.
A separate programme will see 15m trees planted in and around towns and cities, starting with Durham. Before the trust planted 100,000 trees around Hull, it was the country’s least wooded city. Brady said official studies had shown that the benefit-to-cost ratio of trees in urban areas was an astonishing 5:1.
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Most of the remaining trees will be accounted for by a third element that will create forests and woodlands, often on land owned by third parties, although the trust also owns land, including Smithills, a 1,700-acre site near Bolton.
The scheme will be paid for by the charity’s funds, money from councils , Forestry Commission grants for woodland creation and some EU funds. The trust, which last year had an income of £38m, is hoping to raise this to £100m by 2025.
According to Brady, planting of new woodland across the country in 2014-15 was less than half the government target of 12,355 acres, and the shortfall is being exacerbated by the death of some of the most popular species from damage by pests and diseases.
Ash is the latest species to be affected after sweet chestnut, native juniper and native oaks. Brady says it may take up to 15 years for the full impact on the 12m ash trees outside forests to be felt. The UK’s elms were first hit by Dutch elm disease in 1971. It killed more than 60m trees in two epidemics and continues to spread today.
Replanting is a chance to reduce the countryside’s dependence on a narrow group of species, and the trust is turning to records from the late 17th century onwards to ensure that landscapes do not end up looking too similar.
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It is being advised by Tom Williamson, professor of landscape history at the University of East Anglia, who has found that the long dominance of oak, elm and ash was down to economics rather than the outcome of a natural process. The three accounted for between 85% and 100% of the trees growing on farmland in the four counties he studied — Norfolk, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire and Yorkshire — before disease hit.
Ash was prized for fencing and firewood, elm was good for planks and water pipes, while oak was excellent for building.
Williamson suggests replanting with sycamore, maple, beech and alder in Yorkshire; aspen, cherry, beech and apple in the west of Hertfordshire, and black poplar, hornbeam and maple in the east of the county. Low-lying areas of Northamptonshire could be planted with large-scale tracts of willow. Farmers in Suffolk and Essex have already been sent 3,100 saplings, at a heavily subsidised rate of £60 for 45 trees.
Nick Reid, 58, who co-owns a 370-acre farm with his wife Liz at Overbury Hall, near Layham, Suffolk, is pointing the way. He has restored 4,440 yards of hedges, dotting them with trees, partly with the support of the Woodland Trust.
Wildlife is now returning. A census last year counted 47 species and it is home to 70 yellowhammers, nesting plovers, and a short-eared owl.
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Reid said: “People are beginning to realise that we have to manage the landscape in a more sustainable way. It just needs a lot of farmers to do a little bit.”
