Ancient woodland is our richest wildlife habitat and is scarce, covering only around 2% of Wales’ land area. The need to protect what is left is paramount, yet unless urgent action is taken now, vast areas of ancient woodland are in danger of losing their wildlife value forever.
Between the 1930s and 1980s, tens of thousands of hectares of ancient woodland in Wales were replanted, mostly with commercial conifers or a mixture of conifers and broadleaved trees. The communities of plants and animals that depend upon the stable environment that ancient woodland provides were devastated if not by felling and clearance using heavy machinery, then by chemicals used to prevent regrowth, by the dense shade cast by closely planted new trees, or smothering from deep layers of conifer needles.
Research shows that in the next ten years most of the conifers planted on ancient woodland sites will reach maturity. If they are felled and replaced with more conifers then the wildlife dependent on ancient woodland will not survive. More than a quarter of ancient woods are now covered by conifer or mixed plantation.
Coed Cadw (Woodland Trust) has been working hard not just to restore ancient planted ancient woodland sites that are in our ownership, but to campaign to urge the Welsh Assembly Government to restore its own sites and to encourage private land owners to do likewise.
The campaign met with success in March 2009 when Wales’ Rural Affairs Minister Elin Jones launched the new Woodlands for Wales Strategy. The strategy commits the Forestry Commission Wales to restoring all planted ancient woodland sites in their own care, with the exception of those “that have insufficient ancient woodland remnants to enable successful restoration”. This commitment appears on page 45 of the strategy, which can be downloaded here.
While Coed Cadw would have liked the commitment to extend to all planted ancient woodland sites, it is our view that in practice it would be difficult to find a planted ancient woodland site that did not have sufficient ancient woodland remnants to enable successful restoration. We are therefore supporting the Forestry Commission Wales in implementing this new policy, and we look forward to seeing the results over the coming year or so.
Find out more about what the Woodland Trust is doing to encourage restoration of planted ancient woodland sites.