Britons are Tree Impoverished

People living in Britain have some of the fewest trees per person anywhere in the world (see global data) with just 47 trees per person. But what about the distribution of trees within Britain? Due to the inequality of distribution, on average most British people have even fewer trees and woodlands, unless they live in rural Scotland and a small selection of other rural locations.

Key Facts

• Only one constituency has relatively excellent levels of woodland cover, attaining the maximum percentile: Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross with 3.2 hectares per person, thanks to a relatively high woodland cover (14.6%) and low human population (60,554).
• The data was heavily skewed by this constituency (see piechart in my online article), the median across all data being 0.008 ha hectares per person, given 7.8% woodland cover and 100,838 people per constituency. Assuming a mean of 80 trees per hectare in a mature woodland, there are 0.32 trees per person, or one tree between three people.
• 172 constituencies have poor levels of woodland cover, an average of 0.004ha per person. This could equate to one tree for every 31 people.
• 146 constituencies have very poor levels of woodland cover, with an average of 0.001ha per person. This could equate to one tree for every 125 people.
• Together (last two facts) that means that 34 million Britain’s have poor to very poor levels of trees and woodland.
• The constituencies with the most people per area of woodland were Luton South (ranked 632), Hackney North (631), and Bradford West (630).
• The constituencies with the least people per area of woodland were Na h-Eileanan an Iar (ranked 1st), North East Cambridgeshire (2nd), and Runnymede and Waybridge (3rd).

To read more, and explore an interactive map of Britain showing the relative proportion of trees and woodlands per person per constituency, complete with pop-out additional data, see the full article on my website.