Magnificent oak, elm and ash trees standing alone in England’s fields are a celebrated fixture of the paintings of John Constable and other artists.
Now the mainstay of the country’s landscape is under threat, with a study finding that up to 84 per cent have been lost since the advent of intensive farming.
Field trees are vital stepping stones for wildlife, allowing birds, bats and insects to cross easily between fragmented patches of woodland, but the shift to bigger farm machinery and dedication to maximising crop yield has led to millions being uprooted.
Volunteer citizen scientists recruited by the Woodland Trust studied maps from 1850 and digitised the locations of more than 100,000 trees in small groups or isolated in fields and on boundaries in 5,000 sq km of Essex and Suffolk.
This data was then compared with recent aerial photographs to determine those still standing. They found just over half of the 1.2 million trees mapped were no longer there and 84 per cent of field trees had been felled or had died and not been replaced.
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The trend “is likely replicated in other UK landscapes, particularly those with similar histories of agricultural intensification”, according to the research published in the trust’s State of the UK’s Woods and Trees 2021 report. It said the benefits of field trees to wildlife and people were “myriad but not well understood or recognised. We need to achieve greater acknowledgement of their importance, separate to that of woodland cover, among land owners and businesses”.
The trust said that some farmers considered field trees to be a nuisance because they had to divert around them when ploughing, spraying and harvesting. They also cast shade on crops and competed for water, potentially reducing profits.
The trust undertook the study because it was aware that many field trees had been lost but found that they were not being monitored by government bodies.
“Everyone takes them for granted but these results indicate we shouldn’t be doing so,” said Abi Bunker, the trust’s director of conservation.
Farmers may say they plant more trees elsewhere, but the trust said this overlooked that trees became more valuable for wildlife the older they got. Mature oak trees support more than 2,300 species, with caterpillars of purple hairstreak butterflies feeding on their leaf buds, pied flycatchers and marsh tits nesting in bark crevices and stag beetles inhabiting the rich leaf mould beneath the tree.
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The report also revealed that the number of ancient woods under threat from development had continued to rise, reaching 1,225. Since 2000 at least 981 ancient woodlands have been lost or damaged but 1,186 have been saved after being threatened by development plans.
Ancient woodland gained greater protection in 2018 in planning guidance that stated that developments causing direct loss should be refused unless there were “wholly exceptional reasons”.
The trust said that many of the threats were indirect, such as housing estates surrounding ancient woodland and cutting off its wildlife.
Ancient woodland covers 2.5 per cent of the UK and 50 per cent of that had already been harmed by commercial forestry plantations or rhododendron invasion, the report said.
It also highlighted the slow rate of expansion of woods despite a government promise to more than double the annual planting rate in the UK to 30,000 hectares a year by 2025.
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The proportion of the UK that is covered in woodland more than doubled from 4.7 per cent to 12 per cent between 1905 and 1998 but since then trees have been planted on only another 1.2 per cent, taking the total to 13.2 per cent.
The Climate Change Committee has recommended that the proportion should rise to at least 17 per cent by 2050 to help the UK to meet its target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by storing carbon in trees.
National treasures
● There are about 600 species of oak, two of which are native to the UK: the pedunculate oak, also known as the English oak, produces acorns that hang on a stalk or peduncle, and the sessile oak produces stalkless acorns.
●The Bowthorpe oak in Lincolnshire is thought to be more than 1,000 years old and is one of the oldest oaks in Europe. It has the largest girth of a pedunculate oak in the UK, at 13.3m around the trunk.
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●A 200-year-old oak at the National Trust’s Stourhead estate in Wiltshire was declared the tallest in the UK in 2012. Its height was measured that year at 132.5ft (40.4m).
●The large round growths found on the trunks of oak trees are caused by a species of gall wasp and were used to make ink that was used to write Magna Carta, Newton’s theories and Mozart’s music.
●Oaks produce one of the hardest and most durable timbers but take up to 150 years to be ready for harvesting for construction.
