Another Day in Fangorn

How do you explain the issues related to trees and woodlands in 500 words? Impossible, so I will do so in three posts, a sort of trilogy or tree-logy. Firstly our inherited tree cover, secondly current issues of inequity and thirdly what we need for the future.

There are any number of metrics you can use to sum up where we are, the total number of trees on the planet estimated to be 3.04 tn, in the UK 3bn, the area of our country covered by trees is 13.2% up from just 4.7% in 1905. 19.4% of all canopy relates to trees outside woodlands, the majority of trees in this group being natives, so it is this group of trees, many falling in urban areas, that make up 30% of all native trees in the UK. The bare numbers don’t tell the full story, over 65% of trees planted in recent years were installed in Scotland, just 10% in Wales. The UK Government is targeting 30,000 new trees per annum, they have never got close, many cities are now looking at min 20% canopy cover some 30%. All these metrics paint a picture of an increasing numbers of trees and increasing extents of canopy, which is good, isn’t it?

Trees are inevitably manifestations of our culture and our history, kings and robbers have hidden in them, leaders have been born and then buried beneath them, tales, myths and half truths have been written about them, painters have celebrated them, poets and authors imagined them, Dunsinane, Fangorn, The Forbidden Forest. Royals and nobleman have planted them to facilitate hunting and more latterly have installed them for public good, The People’s Forest (Epping), The National Forest, The Forest for the Nation.

In a rural context trees and woods have their own narrative witnessed by the diversity of names they enjoy, spinney, copse, covert, grove, furze, rough, holt, chase, every title meaning something specific to the peasant or serf who carried out the planting. The character of whole counties has been formed by these practices, the Warwickshire process of assarting being a local manifestation of enclosure. More latterly these much loved characteristics have been lost, either by those managing them or by disease, Dutch Elm Disease and now Ash Dieback and Oak Processionary Moth etc, wiping out whole populations. Even the Government agencies are responsible for dramatic change to our tree population, the planting of coniferous woodlands across much of our wilder landscape during the 50s and 60s having profound effects, as do subsidies and tax breaks.

Coming back to the numbers perhaps they aren’t the only critical consideration? Maybe when you dig deeper you start to see trees as a manifestation of historic economic and social circumstances. I think we all know that a leafy suburb or even a leafy central urban neighbourhood has higher valued properties than one with fewer trees, trees have always been aligned with personal wealth. With 85% of all trees on private land needless to say, those with the gardens, and particularly big gardens and even estates, are the ones planting and benefitting from the tree cover.

And yet the inequality of tree cover goes even deeper. England and particularly London, enjoys far more trees which are more than 110 years old than Scotland, Wales and northern English cities. England enjoys 75% of all the UKs small woods, 80% of all groups of trees, 80% of all lone trees and 85% of all recorded ancient trees, so a far richer and more diverse population than Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Why is that, probably because anything of size 110 years ago was chopped down to support the WW1 effort, while London’s avenues were seemingly spared. Had Hitler been victorious in WW2 we would have been looking at a very different London now, Berlin’s Tiergarten and the Lindens along Unter den Linden were stripped out by locals after the war desperate to keep warm, no doubt Bloomesbury would have suffered the same fate had the fortunes of war been reversed. So our tree population is inevitably a reflection of our past.

Perhaps England’s legacy of an ancient tree population is both a blessing and a curse. Streets dominated by ancient monsters have no capacity for additionality when it comes to climate change. Most trees stop active growth at around 70 years, after that they become stable or even regress. So by the time they are 70 years old they will have reduced their sequestration potential. Yes they are vast storers of historically accumulated carbon, about 5 tonnes per tree, but they aren’t going to accumulate much more. If there is little opportunity for additional planting then the streets within which they sit will offer few benefits. However, from a climate resilience perspective the umbrellas of these huge monsters are really important.

The other sea change related to trees is societies awareness of their benefits, most of us now accept their value, even if it is not formally recorded. 23% of all UK schools have applied to plant native trees through the Woodland Trees since 2017. Biodiversity Net Gain will inevitably push our trees numbers far higher. Despite this the long established threats from development, mismanagement, disease and of course now climate change continue to take their toll.

What all this suggests is that a ) trees are key to who we are and where we are going and b) a comprehensive tree strategy, reflecting differences of context is needed. Its all very well pledging to plant 30,000 trees per annum or instructing farmers to turn over 10% of their land to woodland, but this must be done in a considered way, our approach needs to be leaner, smarter, more focused, more adaptive.

The trees we enjoy now are a product of decisions taken decades ago, most of our trees were planted before the crowning of our late Queen, some before the ascent? to? the throne of Victoria, a few even before Elizabeth 1st became queen. The trees planted in William and Kate’s time will not yield maximum benefit until the boy Geoge has sired the next heir to our throne, so we are in this for the long haul.

Essential Reading

Woodland Trust: State of the UK’s Woods and Trees 2021

Forest Research : Forestry? Statistics? 2023