Is tree planting the solution for carbon capture and increasing biodiversity?

Many people believe that the solution to the climate and biodiversity emergencies is to plant more trees, but seem unable to consider an alternative to regimented rows of close-planted trees that will need regular thinning to achieve their goal of a closed-canopy forest as soon as possible.

A much better, and cheaper, solution is natural regeneration, which can be done anywhere where there are suitable species nearby, within dispersal range. Even for species like oaks, their heavy seeds can be carried for a mile or more across open ground by that friend of the forest, the Jay.

Natural regeneration results, fairly quickly, in grassland with scrub. These two habitats are among our rarest in the UK, after centuries of intensification, but provide the required habitats for a myriad of species that have declined significantly or become extinct.

The Red-backed Shrike is extinct as a breeding bird in the UK, but that's only because its favoured habitat of scrub and grassland is missing throughout most of the country. Recreate the habitat and bring back its prey and this bird would once more be a common sighting in our landscape.

Where traditionally-planted trees quickly develop into a dense, close-packed, stand; natural regeneration produces a mosaic of habitats including grassland, scrub and young trees, which are all sequestering carbon and increasing biodiversity. This habitat will also bolster vole populations, which are food for many birds of prey including kestrels and owls.

Where possible, we should be allowing and encouraging natural regeneration across large areas of the UK countryside and this can be combined with farming of extensively-ranging cattle and pigs, both of which will contribute to the management of the habitats and will be much healthier than 'conventionally' reared animals, as they can self-medicate and don't need worming with harmful vermicides that can wipe out native invertebrates. The meat from these animals, which basically look after themselves, is of a much higher quality and can be sold at premium prices, offsetting the lower stocking densities.

Much of this is 'hands-off', with the habitats managed by the wildlife or proxies such as domestic cattle, ponies and pigs, which substitute for the extinct species of aurochs, bison, wild horses and wild boar. In an extensively managed landscape these animals, at the right densities, can create and maintain a diverse array of habitats from wetland to woodland and, with keystone species like the beaver, can rapidly rewild the landscape, while cleaning and holding back the water that causes so much flooding.

By allowing nature to take control, we save millions of pounds and get a much better result for wildlife and for people. By managing whole landscapes like this we can also harvest the trees and wildlife to sustain local community needs, rather than using the conventional intensive methods of timber and food production. Yes, there will be a need to maintain some more intensive practises, but hopefully at a much lower level of intensity to the current methods.

For now, we should at least consider allowing nature to create a mosaic of carbon-storing habitats and stop spending huge amounts of money on tree-planting vanity projects. With beavers hopefully being reintroduced across the country, we could have some amazing wetland habitats as well, like the one below.

Martin is an ecological and biodiversity consultant who also takes small groups of people to his 'secret corner' of south-east Poland, where biodiversity can still be found. His guests, many of them seasoned ecologists in their 50s and 60s, are astounded at the abundance and variety of species compared to the UK. Most of these are species we're familiar with, but in much greater numbers, together with many species that are now extinct in the UK.

Where a walk in the UK countryside for four hours would cover many miles and you'd see very little, Martin's group in 2019 took four hours to walk less than a mile because there was so much to see (including close views of a corncrake and the beaver-created wetland above).

Read the 'log' of that trip and see lots of photographs and videos, including of the corncrake, at https://secure.wildlifeservices.co.uk/poland-wildlife-trips-3