Why has woodland in the UK declined?
After the last Ice Age, wild woodland would have covered much of the UK. However, woodland cover began to decline with the arrival of neolithic man and the first clearance of forests for agriculture. Deforestation continued over the centuires, as our population grew and more land was turned over to agriculture and development.
By the time of the Domesday book in 1086 woodland cover in England was estimated to be around 15 per cent and this is thought to have halved in the following 300 years. After this, woodland cover fluctuated, but with an overall downward trend, until recent times, according to human population levels and our demand for wood and timber.
Today, the UK is one of the least wooded places in Europe. Only 12 per cent of the UK's landscape is wooded compared with an average of 44 per cent in other European countries. And, only a small proportion of this, around 40 per cent, is native woodland.
Ancient woodland, land which has been continuously wooded since at least 1600AD and is our closest link with the original wildwood, now covers only 2 per cent* of the UK's land area.
(*This varies from 4.2 per cent in Scotland to 3.2 per cent in Wales, 2.45 per cent in England and less than 0.1 per cent in Northern Ireland.)
Sadly, nearly 50 per cent of the ancient woodland that survived until the 1930s has since been lost or damaged by agriculture, development or planting by non-native conifers for commercial forestry.
This amount of ancient woodland cannot increase, so what survives is infinitely precious. The majority of remaining ancient woodland is fragmented and unprotected and unless something is done to halt the decline, we risk losing what is left of our precious woodland heritage.
The Woodland Trust is working hard to change this.