Our trees are being destroyed. We are all responsible. But, we can all do something about it.
Two magnificent oak trees, probably the oldest trees in my village, have just been monolithed. The two oak trees are more than 400 years old, and were possibly planted in the reign of Charles II. They mark the boundary of a historic lane and are close to the centre of the historical extent of the royal hunting forest that extended west from Windsor. Stop for a minute and think what these trees will have seen in their life time. They will have seen the building of a large manor house, a day’s horse-ride from parliament and the creation of park-land around that house. They may even have sheltered the writer Alexander Pope who once lived there. The green-space that the oak trees overshadowed bears his name and contains signs that tell the visitor a little about his work, but surprisingly nothing about these amazing trees.
The oak trees are riddled with decay and are close to a busy road. Monolithing is the process of removing the entire crown (all the main branches), whilst ensuring the standing stem remains a balanced structure. This reduces the risk of falling limbs damaging people or property. Some trees will grow again once monolithed and could have many decades more life. It is not certain that these two ancient trees will survive the shock. Even if they do re-grow, the trees will never re-gain their former majesty.
Monolithing is currently regarded as best practice if a tree has to be removed for safety reasons as it retains some woody material to provide food and homes to a wide range of species. In this case some of the cut timber has also been left behind to create habitat piles. I would wager that some of this will vanish quite quickly owing to the proximity of houses with wood-burning fires. Even if the cut timber remains on site, there has still been a significant loss of habitat for fungi and detritivores and all the other nature that lives on them.
It’s easy to blame the local council whose contractors did this work, but you and I are just as guilty of destroying our natural heritage. This destruction takes many forms: a home-owner removing a tree to build an extension; a developer removing a section of hedgerow to access a new site; disease (e.g. ash dieback); changes to drainage stressing an old tree; simple neglect; heat stress from our changing climate; or pollution from our cars, businesses and lifestyles. In a local copse we have mature ash trees dying, evergreens, including a giant redwood, showing signs of heat stress, sycamores and chestnuts showing signs of disease, oak trees shedding limbs due to compaction, drought and wind, and hazels being crowded out by bramble and holly.
But, I hear you say, what about all the tree-planting that is going on? Despite the efforts of many people it seems that we continue to lose trees. For example, in my local area, “Tree canopy in Bracknell Forest Borough covers 39.8% of the land – making it the third highest tree cover by local authority area in the UK” (Bracknell Forest Council, 2021). In addition, tens of thousands of new trees have been planted by councils, voluntary groups and developers in Bracknell Forest since that statement was written. Despite all this, aerial photographs of the borough are showing a steady decline in tree cover.
I believe that this trend has been reflected nationally. In the winter of 2021/2022 storms caused 12,750 hectares of tree loss in the UK, mostly in Scotland and the north-east of England, the equivalent of around 18.6 million trees. Most of the damage was a result of Storm Arwen in November 2021 (Forestry Commission, 2022). Combine this with the fact that the trees we are planting are not doing well. “… surveys have shown losses of up to one in three of all young trees due to lack of care within the first five years – and in some planting projects, the loss is over 90 percent!” (The Conservation Volunteers, 2022). The failure rate of trees planted in Bracknell Forest during the last three years is greater than one third due to dry, hot spells. In one case a newly planted orchard lost more than half of its trees in the summer of 2020. New trees were planted to replace them and at least a quarter of them have not survived.
So, what can we do? Firstly, we need to shift the focus from planting trees to creating and nurturing healthy woods and trees. We know that trees provide us with a range of benefits including capturing carbon, providing shade, reducing flooding, and calming our troubled minds. Recent research has started to highlight the value that individual trees give us, even in an urban setting (Carrington, 2022).
Those who manage woodlands are now receiving consistent advice. In addition to planting the right trees in the right places, we should be creating woodlands with a range of tree ages. Big old trees store carbon while young fast-growing trees capture carbon, and a diversity of tree types and ages provides lots of niches for different flora and fauna to flourish. The Forestry Commission recommend that woodlands are managed to provide continuous canopy and that new woods should be planted with a wide range of native species planted in a way that is more resilient to storms and drought (Forestry Commission, 2022). The Woodland Trust encourages woodland managers to use management techniques like coppicing to provide structural diversity (Woodland Trust, 2022).
In addition, there are a number of things that we should all be doing. We must think twice before cutting down or stressing an existing tree; we must take care of newly planted trees (TCV have a useful set of recommendations here – https://www.conservationhandbooks.com/young-trees-matter-cherish-them/); we can actively care for our woodlands; we can plant more trees; and we can reduce our harmful emissions (including greenhouse gases). Are there newly planted trees near where you live? If so, could you sponsor one and make sure that it is watered during dry-spells, at least for the first few years?
I am convinced that we should also be compensating for the biodiversity that we are destroying. Since I reached that conclusion in an earlier blog-post (https://ecoworrier133969581.wordpress.com/2018/05/30/struggling-to-see-the-wood-for-the-trees/) the tools for working out biodiversity loss and how to compensate have improved. The UK government’s biodiversity net gain toolkit provides uses the concept of biodiversity units to calculate a value for what we have destroyed and hence how we might compensate. The toolkit introduces a hierarchy of compensation for different habitat types. For example, the toolkit recommends like for like replacements for the destruction of significant trees and hedgerows (Natural England, 2022). I am hopeful that we will increasingly see this reflected in all of our approaches to dealing with ‘problem’ trees. However, I’m not sure how one goes about finding a like for like replacement for two four-hundred-year-old oak trees.
The ancient oak trees will live on. We have gathered some of this year’s acorns. We will plant some of them within sight of the skeletons of their parents. As I write these words it occurs to me that there are other ways to remember the fallen.
References
Bracknell Forest Council, 2021. Tree Strategy. [Online]
Available at: https://www.bracknell-forest.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2021-11/bfc-tree-strategy.pdf [Accessed 7 December 2022].
Carrington, D., 2019. Convert half of UK farmland to nature, urges top scientist. [Online]
Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/31/convert-farmland-to-nature-climate-crisis
[Accessed 7 January 2020].
The Conservation Volunteers, 2022. Young Trees Matter: Cherish Them. [Online]
Available at: https://www.conservationhandbooks.com/young-trees-matter-cherish-them/ [Accessed 07 December 2022].
Forestry Commission, 2022. Forestry Commission Chair calls for change in approach. [Online]
Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/forestry-commission-chair-calls-for-change-in-approach-to-tree-planting-as-last-years-winter-storm-damage-revealed
[Accessed 7 December 2022].
Natural England, 2022. The Biodiversity Metric 3.1. [Online]
Available at: http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/6049804846366720
[Accessed 8 December 2022]. Woodland Trust, 2022. Coppicing. [Online]
Available at: https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/plant-trees/managing-trees-and-woods/types-of-woodland-management/
[Accessed 7 December 2022].
It isn't easy being green 