What will England’s new forest be like? There seem to be fresh forests cropping up all over the place these days. It is just two months since […]

There seem to be fresh forests cropping up all over the place these days. It is just two months since the Government was announcing that Doddington Moor in Northumberland would be the site of England’s largest new woodland for more than 30 years. Now that project looks set to be dwarfed by the Northern Forest – a thrillingly ambitious woodland creation scheme that will stretch from Hull to Liverpool, tracking the route of the M62 and covering 25,000 hectares.

An unbroken canopy of wilderness and wolves?

If you are imagining that one day a great sea of trees will surge from coast to coast, an unbroken green canopy of wilderness and wolves, then you should quickly shed that image. This will be a forest in the medieval sense, where there will indeed be stretches of thick woodland (the plan is to plant 50 million saplings), but it will also incorporate farmland, moors, parks, towns, villages and cities.

This is a chance to bring woods and trees into the lives of 13 million people – and reconnect a generation that has largely lost touch with nature. Trees will not just be planted on low-value agricultural land, but also in the streets of Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield.

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The forest is being run by five existing Community Forest Trusts and – at their head – the Woodland Trust. The Government has promised an initial £5.7m, but the eventual cost will top £500m, spread over 25 years. Funding is being sought from private donations, local government and corporate sponsorship.

The right trees in the right places

The plan, says Steve Marsh of the Woodland Trust, is to build on and connect what is already there and “put the right trees in the ground in the right places”. Although, he adds: “What is currently there is derisory.”

It is an important point. Britain has less woodland cover than almost any other European nation (about 13 per cent against the EU average of 35 per cent) and the North of England is especially barren (just 7.6 per cent).

What we regard as a natural northern landscape is most often the work of humans and their sapling-stripping sheep. And this is why, according to Marsh, we are not talking about a Great Southern Forest. The North’s need is greater. John Everitt, the chief executive of the National Forest Company, has some useful forest-creation insights. The first trees of England’s 200-square mile National Forest were planted 25 years ago in the Midlands – a part of the country that was also once bereft of woodland.

It’s about more than saplings

“When planting a new forest, there are technical and cultural issues,” says Everitt. “You need to get the vision right. Of course, you must select the land carefully. But it’s about much more than just putting saplings in the ground – it’s about getting ‘buy-in’.

“We organised countless public meetings. Have you genuinely got the support of communities and landowners? You must offer support to the landowners, because they are going to be doing most of the work. Farmers must become foresters.”

Long-term planning is vital. In the National Forest, there are bespoke grant schemes available so that new housing always comes with new woodland. “The framework doesn’t cost anything,” says Everitt. “And if you get it right, the planning system delivers. The developer pays!”

Why new forests mean public benefits

Everitt and Marsh both stress the public benefits of the new forests. As well as flood mitigation, carbon capture, air and water quality, recreation and biodiversity, there are also the commercial opportunities to be considered.

Andrew Heald, of the Confederation of Forest Industries (ConFor), is enthusiastic. “The UK is the second-biggest importer of forest products in the world, worth more than £11bn last year,” he says. “It is vital that these new forests are sustainable not just in environmental terms but also economically. We can lower our carbon footprint, make greater use of sustainable timber in construction and reduce timber miles.”

So, the new forest will be a mix of native broadleaves and conifers, amenity and industry. This may disappoint British woodland purists, but with climate chaos disrupting woodland ecologies, and new pests and diseases ravaging our trees, there is debate over what species are best suited to the changing environment.

Changing climate

Stephen Coffey, head forester at the Heart of England Forest, is sticking to native trees for now. But he says: “We’re going to end up with a climate more like Bordeaux in the next 50 years, and we may need to shift the provenance of planting stock further south to compensate.”

When planting, Coffey mimics the random patterns of natural woodland – with the introduction of tracks about 15m (50ft) wide to introduce more natural light.

Some species are more likely to naturally regenerate than others – currently alder, aspen, hawthorn, willow, ash, birch and oak – but Coffey says: “On a very small number of our plantations, and then only in parts, has the natural regeneration been significant enough for me the think that we didn’t need to plant that field.”

Tree’s a crowd: Three other new forests Kielder Forest

Kielder is the largest man-made forest in Britain. In the 1920s, the newly formed Forestry Commission was told to secure the country’s timber needs, so they blanketed 250 sq miles of rare Northumberland moorland with rows of conifers. Since then, environmental and amenity expectations have shifted. The forest is now famous for its dark skies, red squirrels and as a possible site for the reintroduction of the Eurasian Lynx. The National Forest

England’s National Forest has revitalised 200 square miles of the Midlands, much of it old mining land. It’s an example of what we might see in the Northern Forest: a leafy mix of villages, towns, farmland, broadleaf woods and commercial forestry. It has also taken them 25 years to get to this point. The Heart of England Forest

The hard-living publisher Felix Dennis founded the charity in 2003 for the creation of this wondrous broadleaf forest near the site of the long-vanished Forest of Arden (this is “Shakespeare” country). The aim is to create a joined-up area of woodland of 30,000 acres, containing more than 10 million trees (native broadleaves only).

In other words, what mix of species ends up being planted in the new Northern Forest – and where – will depend on a shifting climate, economic needs and local buy-in. It will probably change over time.

Corridors of nature

The Woodland Trust is also trying to think long-term and on a landscape scale. The right trees will be planted in the right places. Other precious ecosystems will be left alone. Corridors of nature will flow into the cities. “Woodland creation is habitat creation,” says Marsh.

Nor must we forget our existing ancient woodland. “This is not a binary thing,” he adds. “We need to strengthen legislation around the protection of ancient woodland and we need to create new forests.”

Oliver Rackham, the doyenne of woodland ecologists who died in 2015, put it best. ‘Tree planting is not synonymous with conservation,” he said. “It is an admission that conservation has failed.”

A long time coming

An ancient woodland dating back to at least the year 1600 is uniquely rich, especially its soil, and it could take centuries to recreate this diversity from scratch.

We might also add that waving through fracking in one part of Yorkshire, while cheering on the tree-planting in another, is not a coherent environmental strategy. It is hard to shake the feeling that much of what is now happening is thanks to the dedicated lobbying and hard work of some inspirational groups and individuals, not the headline-grabbers of central government.

Even so, it is surely wrong to carp when the first sapling for the Northern Forest will be snuggled into the soil in Smithills Estate near Bolton this March. In among all this talk of grants and cost benefits, let’s not forget what woodland wonders could be waiting for us at the end of this 25-year journey.

Peter Fiennes is the author of ‘Oak and Ash and Thorn: the Ancient Woods and New Forests of Britain’ (Oneworld Publications, £16.99)