Ancient Wood­land Restoration

Back­ground information

Nat­ur­al treas­ures lie dam­aged and for­got­ten in more than a quarter of the UK’s woods. Unless we act now we will lose them for ever.

Our ancient trees, forests and wood­lands provide us with a unique link to our past. They give us intriguing insights into how we used to live and tell lost stor­ies and legends of our ancest­ors. Ancient wood­land is land that has been con­tinu­ally wooded since at least AD1600; some ancient wood­land may even be a link back to the ori­gin­al ​“Wild­wood” that covered the coun­try around 10,000 years ago after the last ice age. Today, it con­trib­utes sub­stan­tially to our nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al heritage.

Ancient wood­land is also our most pre­cious hab­it­at. It is scarce and irre­place­able and sup­ports 232 of our rarest and most vul­ner­able spe­cies. How­ever, ancient wood­land is under increas­ing threat and today cov­ers only 2% of the UK (around 450,000ha), mak­ing it a pri­or­ity with­in the UK’s Biod­iversity Action Plan for pre­ser­va­tion and restoration.

Almost half of the ancient wood­land we have left is in need of restoration.

In the years fol­low­ing World War 2 much of our ancient wood­lands were felled and replaced with non-nat­ive con­ifers. This con­ifer­isa­tion was car­ried out on a large scale by the pub­lic and private sec­tors as a res­ult of a policy drive to replen­ish the nation­al tim­ber reserve and to improve the eco­nom­ics of ancient woodlands.

Con­trast of light and dark; ancient wood­land (left) con­ifer plant­a­tion (right)

At the time there was a lack of under­stand­ing of the biod­iversity value of these import­ant forests. Dense shade-cast­ing con­ifers often smothered the remain­ing ancient wood­land fauna and flora, res­ult­ing in the decline of many of these species.

The evid­ence base

Research by Oxford Uni­ver­sity and the Wood­land Trust, has shown that some rem­nant fea­tures of the ancient wood­land hab­it­at sur­vived, and that by slowly remov­ing shad­ing con­ifers and enabling light to gradu­ally pen­et­rate the wood­land can­opy, we can encour­age spe­cial­ist spe­cies to recov­er from their fra­gile state and reverse years of dam­age. To view the sci­entif­ic evid­ence vis­it our web­site.

Why does it matter?

It is the only way in which the area of semi-nat­ur­al wood­land with ancient char­ac­ter­ist­ics can be increased. The UK is one of the least wooded parts of Europe with 13% wood­land cov­er, only 2% is ancient wood­land (around 450,000 hec­tares). Of this sur­viv­ing ancient wood­land, just over half sur­vives nat­ur­ally, the rest has been felled and planted with exot­ic con­ifers or dam­aged by invas­ive spe­cies like Rhodo­den­dron. These degraded ancient wood­lands still retain many of the com­pon­ents of ancient wood­land com­munit­ies, includ­ing hid­den biod­iversity with­in dead­wood and undis­turbed forest soils.

Although hab­it­ats may have been dam­aged by plant­a­tions, they have not been des­troyed. How­ever, the longer action is delayed, the less likely it is to suc­ceed. This is a time-lim­ited oppor­tun­ity because many of these planted ancient wood­lands (PAWS) are increas­ingly due to be felled again and could be replanted with a fur­ther crop of con­ifers, com­pound­ing the dam­age done to wild­life that remains.

What’s our role?

The Wood­land Trust is a lead­er in this area of sens­it­ive res­tor­a­tion. Increas­ingly now we are look­ing to work with oth­er private landown­ers who own over 125,000 Ha of con­ifer plant­a­tions and whom we can assist with advice and guid­ance on the prac­tic­al­it­ies, pro­cesses, costs and fund­ing, as well as the bene­fits of sens­it­ive ancient wood­land restoration.

The Trust will under­take a major UK-wide ini­ti­at­ive to facil­it­ate the res­tor­a­tion of our ancient wood­land hab­it­ats. Work­ing with a wide range of landown­ers and organ­isa­tions with­in ten pri­or­ity res­tor­a­tion areas around the UK, the pro­ject has iden­ti­fied the bar­ri­ers that exist to pre­vent ancient wood­lands being restored and the most effect­ive means of deliv­ery in these areas.

Many landown­ers have had little oppor­tun­ity to learn about the bene­fits of a gradu­al wood­land res­tor­a­tion approach. Without this oppor­tun­ity there is con­sid­er­able threat to our ancient wood­land resource from unsym­path­et­ic and dam­aging man­age­ment prac­tices such as clear felling or from a lack of any man­age­ment activ­ity. The ancient wood­land res­tor­a­tion pro­ject will work col­lab­or­at­ively with own­ers to help estab­lish pos­it­ive man­age­ment and res­tor­a­tion tech­niques that will in turn deliv­er not only healthy, thriv­ing restored ancient wood­lands, but a range of bene­fits for people too.

The ancient wood­land res­tor­a­tion pro­ject sig­ni­fies a new approach to a large and dif­fi­cult issue that will bring far-reach­ing and remark­able pos­it­ive impacts that will change our wooded land­scapes forever. It will sig­ni­fy a massive ​“step change” in the level of ancient wood­land res­tor­a­tion activ­ity across the UK.

Pro­ject aims

• Estab­lish con­tact with c. 1,200 landown­ers across the ten pri­or­ity areas and provide them with advice and sup­port on how to restore their plant­a­tions on ancient wood­land sites
• Hold a series of edu­ca­tion and train­ing work­shops atten­ded by over 2,400 people
• Deliv­er bespoke train­ing for wood­land specialists
• Deliv­er a volun­teer train­ing pro­gramme, enga­ging at least 64 volunteers
• Deliv­er a pro­gramme of pub­lic talks enga­ging 11,500 people
• Estab­lish a pro­gramme of train­ing and tools to enable 40 loc­al groups and Wood­land Trust volun­teers to under­take research and sur­vey work
• Devel­op an AWR online ​“inform­a­tion hub”
• Pro­duce a new man­age­ment guide for own­ers and managers
• Deliv­er a range of pro­ject events, includ­ing con­fer­ences and webinars.

What will the pro­ject cost?

The over­all cost of the pro­ject over five years is £2.92 mil­lion. We have now secured a £1.9 mil­lion grant from the Her­it­age Lot­tery Fund and £490,000 from volun­teer in-kind sup­port and part­ner organ­isa­tions but we still need to close a £530,000 fund­ing gap.

Thanks to the gen­er­os­ity of our mem­bers and sup­port­ers we are well on the way to reach­ing our tar­get — but we’re not there yet. Please help us by donat­ing today and become part of the largest ever wood­land res­tor­a­tion project.

When will it start?

The pro­ject will not get fully under­way before we have com­pleted the recruit­ment of Pro­ject Officers for each area later this year and fully developed a hub of inform­a­tion and toolkits to be avail­able for landown­ers, wood­land man­agers and any­one else inter­ested. It is anti­cip­ated that the full pro­ject launch will take place in the New Year (2014).

How much ancient wood­land is there to restore?

There are some 228,000 hec­tares of planted ancient wood­land sites across the UK. The divi­sion between coun­tries and the amount in pub­lic own­er­ship vary and are giv­en in the table below:

	Hec­tares 000’s	% of UK total	% (ha) of PAWS held by the pub­lic forest estate
Eng­land	140	61	38 (53,200ha)
Scot­land	59	26	52 (30,680ha)
Wales	28	12	46 (12,880ha)
North­ern Ireland	1	1	53 (530ha)
Total	228		42.67% (97,290ha)

Are these Wood­land Trust woods, or in private ownership?

The woods we are tar­get­ing with this pro­ject are in private own­er­ship: and through the pro­ject we aim to engage with at least 1200 landowners.

Are private landown­ers going to be con­trib­ut­ing to res­tor­a­tion costs on their land?

Yes, we anti­cip­ate they will con­trib­ute towards the res­tor­a­tion costs through the poten­tial income from tim­ber extrac­ted as part of the res­tor­a­tion pro­cess. In addi­tion, they may be able to access forestry grants to sup­port the res­tor­a­tion work. The pro­ject will not dir­ectly fund res­tor­a­tion work on private land but provide the neces­sary train­ing and sup­port to enable landown­ers, con­tract­ors and coun­tryside pro­fes­sion­als to under­take suc­cess­ful res­tor­a­tion of ancient woodland.

Where are the ten pro­ject areas?

The pro­ject areas are dis­trib­uted through­out the UK:

• Great Glen and Three Firths
• Cairngorms and Hinterland
• South and West Yorkshire
• Clwyd
• Pow­ys
• West­ern Mid Wales
• Here­ford­shire and West Worcestershire
• Exmoor and West Devon
• Low Weald
• North­ern Ireland

How did we decide on the 10 pro­ject areas?

The pro­ject areas were pri­or­it­ised on the basis of where the greatest con­cen­tra­tions of planted ancient wood­lands were in the coun­try, that weren’t already covered by exist­ing res­tor­a­tion pro­jects, and where we had part­ners to work with.