The Woodland Trust Attempts to Save UK's Ancient Forests
9/28/99
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Title: Saving Britain's ancient forests: The Woodland Trust has
bought up 1,000 of the UK's ancient forests
Source: BBC News
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: September 28, 1999
The Woodland Trust has launched a campaign to save the UK's ancient
woodlands, the countryside's richest habitat for wildlife.
In the past 80 years, half of the UK's ancient woods have been
cleared to make way for agriculture and conifer plantations.
What remains now takes up just 2% of the area once covered by forests
dating back to at least 1600.
By comparison, for all the deforestation during the past two decades,
about 90% of the Amazon rainforest still stands.
In England, 198,000 hectares of ancient woodland remain - the
equivalent of a 28 mile square forest - with 31,000 hectares in
Wales, and 80,000 in Scotland.
Ancient woodland is made up of native broad-leaved trees such as oak
and ash, home to a profusion of flowers, fungi, insects, birds and
other animals.
Money talks
In the past 27 years, the trust has saved about 1,000 woods by buying
up the land, in which members of the public are welcome to wander.
Under new chief executive Mike Townsend, the trust is switching its
focus from woodland purchase to campaigning.
Despite the trust's annual income pushing the o15m mark, "we can't
buy them all".
So the trust wants the Forestry Commission and planning authorities
to recognise the importance of the woods, to get a protection
designation to prevent more losses.
The first-ever official commitment to protect ancient woodland was
made last December in the Government's "Forestry Strategy for
England", which promised to look at ways to protect the forests.
In the meantime, the trust got on with the job of saving Penn Wood in
Buckinghamshire, which had been earmarked for a golf course and 79-
space car park.
Other woods still at risk include Upper Vert Wood in East Sussex,
which is threatened by a plan for a rubbish dump, and Birkhill
Plantation in Scotland, at risk from opencast coal mining.
"Woods like Penn Wood are just a remnant. This is fairly typical for
the whole of Britain - this is not just a problem for
Buckinghamshire," Mr Townsend said.