Do you like trees? What’s not to like? They give us shade and beauty, protect soils and water, provide us with fuel and timber and create wildlife habitats. If that isn’t enough, now we expect them to save the planet and us from our climate change follies.
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treecreepers huddled together, Michael Hoare
Despite the many gifts trees have given us human history has not been kind to trees. Whether with stone axes or modern chain saws we have felled and burned woodland. Globally the world has lost huge areas of woodland, more than 500,000 sq miles cleared in just the last three decades. Today this continues with fires in the Amazon and this year’s tragic Australian bushfires making headlines.
We do need more trees. Our Government’s own advisory panel on climate change has been suggesting here in the UK we need to plant a million trees and create an extra 30,000 hectares of woodland every year, and globally the ‘trillion trees project’ is advocating restoring forests on a massive scale.
So can trees really save the world? Somebody once said, ‘To every complex problem there’s a simple solution …. and it’s usually wrong.’ There are few, if any, problems bigger or more complex than the global climate and biodiversity crises and we should be very wary of simple answers to complex problems.
To stand any chance of addressing the climate and biodiversity crises we first need to stopping clearing and burning existing forests, especially in the tropics. This is far more important than new tree planting schemes.
Thetford Forest, credit Chris Mills
Thinking globally but acting locally there is huge potential across the UK, including here in Norfolk, to create new woodlands. The UK currently has about 13% of its land area wooded, far lower than the average of around 35% for other European countries. In Norfolk tree cover is even lower with only about 9% of Norfolk wooded and that includes Thetford Forest, one of the largest woodlands in England. More trees can benefit wildlife but only if they are the right trees in the right places.
So where in Norfolk could we plant more trees? A good starting place would be restoring our Norfolk hedgerow network and planting new hedgerow trees. Following the principles of creating a living landscape, with ‘bigger, better, and more connected’ natural habitats, then restoring hedgerow links and making small woodlands bigger would benefit our wildlife, from butterflies and bats to woodland birds.
There are some promising signs of action. North Norfolk District Council has recently announced its ambition to plant 110,000 trees. The Forestry Commission are encouraging more tree-planting by farmers through carbon credit payments. Even the Government’s own advisers are suggesting that some farmland will need to be restored to woodland to meet our climate change commitments.
Like many of you I find the idea of helping wildlife and at the same time doing my bit to solve the climate crisis by planting a tree immensely attractive. A tree planted is a gift to future generations with each tiny sapling carrying us in imagination to a destiny far beyond our own lives. But somehow it’s seems a bit too easy as an answer to all our environmental woes.
Yes, let’s plant trees: the right trees in the right places and using a planting plan that benefits wildlife. But equally important we must campaign to prevent the ongoing destruction of the worlds existing natural forests which means addressing the complex social, political and economic factors that drive forest loss. Don’t let’s fool ourselves that tree planting alone will sort the climate crisis while we still carry on burning oil, gas and coal, driving our cars and globe-trotting by air on our holidays. Trees alone will not solve the problem of how we create a sustainable future for people and wildlife – neither in Norfolk, nor globally.