A forest for the future - action is needed now to create
England’s largest new native forest.
Today the UK is one of the least wooded places in Europe with less than 12% woodland cover, compared with a European average of 44%.
This matters to us because wooded landscapes are the types of places that most of us want to live in – whether it’s a tree lined street or a countryside rich in woods and hedgerows.
Woods provide fantastic places for adventure and enjoyment. At the same time they can clean the air, lock up carbon, reduce flooding and provide homes for wildlife. Woods provide products that we can use: from obvious ones such as timber and paper, to less obvious business opportunities such as tourism, wild food harvesting and cycling trails.
For people in cities and towns, woods provide an escape from noise and traffic and the chance to feel peace, quiet and solitude. They are great places to mess about and to learn, particularly for young people. The growth of forest school and bushcraft activities shows that this is increasingly recognised.
We want to increase native woodland cover through our woodland creation schemes in areas where it can really make a difference to people’s lives. In little more than a decade a new wood can transform a landscape and how it is used. Our experience of planting more than 500 community woods in the past two decades has shown us how this opens up opportunities for people to use their local landscape in different ways and how new woods can help make a healthier, richer and more beautiful country for us to live in.
It's also important to involve as many people as possible in the process of changing our land for the better. Since 2004 our Tree for All campaign has invited children to help us plant trees. Over the past three years nearly a million children have planted more than 5 million trees through Tree for All. Every year, nearly a third of all schools and hundreds of community groups take part in the campaign and tens of thousands of children come out to help create new woods.