Ancient Tree Hunt faces public vote in semi-finals of National Lottery Awards 2009 - please use yours!
City trees, country trees, tiny trees clinging to a coastal rock face – whichever variety you look at each day, imagine a world without them! The Ancient Tree Hunt, a unique public effort coordinated by the Woodland Trust to find and record 100,000 ancient, veteran or notable trees across the UK, is one of just ten projects nominated for a National Lottery Award from among hundreds of entries.
It will now face a public vote to find the Best Environment Project – and with just one no cost click or 5 pence call to you, you can vote for us now and send us into the top three for the final round of public voting from 3 – 14 August! The winner and the two runners-up will be announced live on a primetime BBC1 television show later this summer and will win a £2,000 prize to spend on their project.
The Ancient Tree Hunt is a groundbreaking scheme to create the first ever comprehensive living database of ancient trees www.ancienttreehunt.org.uk For historical reasons the UK has more old trees than anywhere else across Europe, but we don’t know their precise numbers or location, and unlike historic buildings, trees don’t have automatic government protection. By recognising their existence, the database aims to be the first step in their protection and care.
Nikki Williams, Ancient Tree Hunt project manager at the Woodland Trust, said: “We are delighted to have reached the semi-finals of The National Lottery Awards. The Ancient Tree Hunt has a really serious purpose, because the UK’s trees are so vulnerable. Our mantra has been for the last three years – if a tree is not recorded, it’s as good as lost!
“Yes, they look pretty in the landscape, but we often forget that even when dead or dying, ancient trees support thousands of rare and threatened animal and plant species. The oldest ones have also stood through every major event in British and world history! As habitats and as heritage, they are literally irreplaceable.”
The Woodland Trust’s target is to have recorded 55,000 trees on its database by the end of this year and a total of 100,000 by 2011 when the five year project ends. To date over 37,000 ancient and notable trees have been recorded across Britain by 6,000 members of the public and assessed for accuracy by 110 volunteer verifiers.
Nikki Williams said: “I think one of the things that makes the Ancient Tree Hunt so special, apart from the trees themselves, is that thousands of people, especially children, have got behind our efforts to find and record them. Tree hunting is brilliant in tough economic times as it’s free to take part, doesn’t require specialist tree knowledge or equipment (a piece of string and a mobile phone or even a hug can be enough!) and you can record a tree in five minutes while out walking with the family.
“So if you love the tree down the road and you want to ensure your children will see it in decades to come, please vote for us – we’re a big national project but with a really local, down-to-earth heart and we would love to recognise just how much every one of you has helped us in our mission to save this vital part of our natural heritage and our environment.”
You can vote online or by telephone, at any time from 0900 hours on Monday 22 June until midday on Friday 10 July.
Simply go to www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/awards and click on the Best Environment Project category to cast your vote – it won’t cost you a penny!
Alternatively you can call 0844 686 6302 (the dedicated Ancient Tree Hunt line) to register your phone vote – a recorded message will be played to callers, confirming a vote has been cast (calls will cost 5 pence from a BT landline; calls from other networks may vary, calls from mobiles could cost considerably more).
Notes to editors
For media enquiries contact:
The Woodland Trust Press Office on 01476 581121, email: media@woodlandtrust.org.uk
The Woodland Trust:
The Woodland Trust is the UK’s leading woodland conservation charity. It has 300,000 members and supporters. The Trust has four key aims: i) No further loss of ancient woodland; ii) Restoring and improving the biodiversity of woods; iii) Increasing new native woodland; iv) Increasing people’s understanding and enjoyment of woodland.
Established in 1972, the Woodland Trust now has over 1,000 sites in its care covering approximately 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres). Access to its sites is free.
Additional Notes to Editors:
The National Lottery Awards
The National Lottery Awards are an annual search to find the UK’s favourite Lottery-funded projects. Lottery players raise £25million each week for the Good Causes, and the Awards are a great way to highlight how that funding has changed Britain for the better.
The Awards are in seven categories, reflecting the different types of projects that benefit from Lottery funding. They launched in 2004, to coincide with the tenth birthday of the Lottery. They aim to recognise the incredible difference that Lottery-funded projects – both large and small – have made to people, places and communities, all across the UK.
Since The National Lottery began in 1994, more than £23 billion has been raised for Good Causes and over 317,000 grants have been awarded across the arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment. For more details of the Awards, including voting regulations, terms and conditions and previous winners, and for more information on Lottery funding to Good Causes, please visit www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/awards
The Ancient Tree Hunt
The project started in 2007 and is led by the Woodland Trust in partnership with the Ancient Tree Forum and the Tree Register of the British Isles. It is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, the Northern Ireland Environment & Heritage Service, the Countryside Council for Wales, the Welsh Council for Voluntary Action, Scottish Natural Heritage and supported by the Forestry Commission Scotland and works with local partners across the UK. Joining the Hunt are the Tree Council, The Caravan Club, The National Trust, English Heritage and Forestry Commission, over 100 regional and local groups, and many landowners. The project is backed by a volunteer verifier team whose detailed local knowledge is used to check information coming in from the public is robust - www.ancienttreehunt.org.uk
