We all love trees – but let’s plant the right ones
Misleading headlines appeared in newspapers this week, claiming that global deforestation was increasing. In fact, the report on which these headlines were based reluctantly admits that net deforestation is actually decreasing, as more felling is offset by new forest being restored or planted.
In Britain this is especially true. A century ago, our island was less than 5 per cent woodland. Today, woodland covers nearly three times as much land, at 13 per cent, and the country is probably almost as wooded as it was in medieval times. In this we are like other wealthy countries. Europe as a whole is steadily becoming more wooded. New England, on the American east coast, went from 30 per cent to 75 per cent woodland in just over 100 years, even as its population rapidly increased.
Pressure groups such as the Woodland Trust would like to see Britain still more heavily forested and complain that we are not planting enough trees every year. Maybe, but it is time to stop obsessing over numbers and start thinking about the quality, not the quantity, of our woodland.
There are about
3.8 billion trees in Britain. Far too many of them, especially in the uplands, are Sitka spruce or lodgepole pine trees: alien species planted here in straight lines by the Forestry Commission (FC), or by private landowners with grants from the FC. They were established with subsidies from the taxpayer during the heyday of the failed policy of trying to develop an internationally competitive timber industry in windy, cool Britain. These blocks of even-aged trees are an eyesore, poor in wildlife, bad for flooding and often
established by digging trenches in peat, which is bad for carbon storage.
By contrast, ancient, semi-natural woodland, rich in birds, toadstools, butterflies and flowers, was ravaged during the 20th century by the FC itself. Astonishingly, a patch of such woodland was far less likely to survive if it belonged to this arm of the state than if it was in private hands. Even as private property, this kind of woodland was often “commercialised” with conifers at the behest of the FC. Belatedly, the commission has tried to turn itself into the guardian of ancient woodlands, but it still encourages the planting of exotic species rather than regeneration of native trees.
This needs to change. The woodlands we want are not closed-canopy forests of trees all the same age, but patchy woods with glades where oaks can spread their branches, while scrubby birch, hawthorn and rowan jostle with bracken and heather for sunlight, views can be glimpsed from hill tops and butterflies dance in the sunny clearings.
I walked through a gorgeous woodland in Scotland last month: old Caledonian pines scattered across a hillside, cep mushrooms bursting around their roots, crossbills calling from the tree tops, deer browsing on juniper shrubs and wide views of distant peaks. It was not thickly enough planted to qualify as “forest”, but it was magnificent woodland. This is what nature most likes – and the human spirit too.