800 years of the Tree Charter: Why our forests need us more than ever

As a new Charter for Trees is launched, Boudicca Fox-Leonard visits a revitalised community wood in South Wales CREDIT:  JOHN LAWRENCE

In slides the shovel, out comes a clod of earth; a delicate sapling is dropped into the neat hole and soil repacked around it. The whole process has taken Robert Penn a minute, the earth stamped down by his heavy boots. The late autumn ground is still a little hard, so during the next few weeks Robert will check back on the newly planted tree, watering it if necessary.

More than 40 families are involved in the community woodland in Monmouthshire, and winter is planting season. In mid-November, the ground will be soft enough for a child to plant a sapling. “There’s something magical about planting a tree that might be here for over 100 years,” says Robert, as we wrap a casing around the beech sapling for warmth and protection. A hornbeam goes in, followed by a crab-apple, an aspen… In five years, how tall will they be? In 50 years? In 100? Flights of fancy are brought back to the hard, dry earth by the reality of the challenges facing our woodlands.

Forestry Commission figures show that 582 hectares of trees were planted in 2016 – the lowest area since records began in 1976. So few trees were planted last year that just three people could have done the job. The Conservative manifesto promise to plant 11 million trees in England by 2020 seems likely to be broken. (Scotland is planting 16 million trees a year and aims to reach 22 million a year from 2017.)

We may think of ourselves as a nation of tree lovers, but the sad truth is that we cut down the vast majority of them a long, long time ago. The UK is one of the least wooded areas in Europe, with 13 per cent woodland cover (10 per cent in England) compared with a European average of 37 per cent. Our arboricide finds its roots in the Neolithic period where our ancestors cleared woodland assiduously for pasture. By the time of the Domesday Book, in 1086, cover was 15 per cent, and it’s been a constant struggle to maintain woodland levels ever since.

Root cause: Boudicca Fox-Leonard helps to plant a sapling in community woodland in Monmouthshire CREDIT: JOHN LAWRENCE

“There was a crisis of woodland use in the Tudor period,” says Robert, a writer and woodsman. “Then, woods were hammered to make charcoal to fire the kilns of the Industrial Revolution. And then, during the First and Second World Wars, transatlantic timber supplies were reduced, and our woods took a hammering again.”

The Forestry Commission was set up in 1919 to rebuild and maintain a strategic timber reserve. But a century later, the threats to woodland are manifold: from neglect to climate change and global disease epidemics. “There’s no need to be hysterical,” says Robert. “But it’s possible our trees are under greater threat now than at any other time since the end of the last ice age.”

We grow up and grow old with trees. They give us the air we breathe, but how often do we celebrate them? The current controversy about cutting down trees in Sheffield for a road scheme serves as a reminder of our complacency. Similarly, the outcry when the government announced a sell-off of public forests in 2012 stimulated, says Robert, a reawakening of the idea that people are interested in trees.

It led to an independent panel on forestry, the result of which is the new Charter for Trees, Woods and People, which will launch at Lincoln Cathedral tomorrow, on the 800th anniversary of the Charter of the Forest. The original charter, issued on November 6 1217, gave back traditional rights to ordinary people to use royal hunting grounds for agriculture and livestock grazing. For the new charter, the Woodland Trust has led 70 organisations and 300 local community groups to collect more than 100,000 signatures and 60,000 tree stories.

“The new document is not going to be enacted, so it doesn’t have teeth,” Robert explains. “But it sets out what we expect from our woods, our right of access to them, and how we expect bodies – local, central and third sector – to behave in respect of the trees and woods we have access to.”

Robert Penn tends to a sapling CREDIT:  JOHN LAWRENCE

Having left the City 15 years ago, Robert has devoted himself to learning how to manage trees sustainably. He confesses to having become “a bit of tree-hugger”, albeit one in a flat cap with two spaniels.

Fifty per cent of British woodland is unmanaged, he says: “They are often deemed to be economically unviable, so the wood manages itself and biodiversity decreases. And with that the chance of getting good timber with economic value decreases, too.”

Until 12 years ago, Court Wood, in the grounds of Llanvihangel Court, was part of that 50 per cent. The 11 acres of mixed hardwood woodland had been out of management for 50 years, and the coppiced woodland had been buried under dense thicket and overwhelmed with brambles. Since taking it on, Robert and other volunteers have cleared glades to allow in light and encourage biodiversity, continued coppicing, and created a woodworking area and charcoal kiln.

“There’s something magical about planting a tree that might be here for over 100 years,” says self-confessed tree-hugger Robert Penn CREDIT: JOHN LAWRENCE

“Slowly but surely we’re bringing it back under management,” he says. “Woodlands like this have become reliant on us, because they’ve been managed by us for so long in a certain way. We’ve created a symbiotic relationship. And by neglecting them we’re breaking that relationship.”

But why should we care? “Good question,” he says. As well as being an economic resource for timber (the UK imports 80 per cent of its timber) they are carbon stores and havens of wildlife. But, says Robert, they are also an important amenity. “We should have more woods with public access to get away from the stress of the city.” He cites the Japanese tradition of shinrin-yoku – “forest-bathing” – and the effect it has on well-being. “It reduces blood pressure, induces better sleep patterns, and lowers secretions of the stress hormone cortisol. Come here on a spring day when it’s heaving with wildlife, butterflies, birds and beetles, and see how you feel.”

One man and his dogs: Robert Penn with Wiggins and Zappa CREDIT:  JOHN LAWRENCE

Winter, though, is the time for action. While, with a little bit of encouragement, the ash-dominant wood would happily reseed itself, Robert and his fellow volunteers are keen to diversify the species, conscious of the effect ash dieback will have in the years to come. “We’re growing British native species underneath the ash, assuming dieback will kill a lot of them,” he says. It is the sweep of disease that gives him cause for concern about the future health of our woodlands.

“Ecologist Dr Oliver Rackham said you’d expect an event like Dutch elm disease to take place once a millennium, not what’s happening now, every decade.”

The lessons of cheap tree imports have been learned too late for the versatile and beautiful ash, but this is even more reason for us to redouble our efforts. “We are rebuilding but we need to do it in a more radical way. Every generation should take it upon itself to replant.” It only takes a minute to plant a tree, but the effects last more than our lifetime.

Source: /telegraph.co.uk/