A Chinese proverb says that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, and the second best time is today. But it’s not easy to ensure the trees of today actually become the healthy, functioning forests of tomorrow.
This is a key issue in the UK, which recently announced it will plant 20 million trees to create a new “national forest” in the west of England. Given the UK is one of the least forested countries in Europe, and one of the most nature-depleted in the world, more trees are definitely needed.
But I know from years of trying to research and restore native forest on Dartmoor in the south west of England, that creating healthy forests requires attention to detail. Unless we are careful, these new woodlands might damage rather than improve the environment: 20 million non-native conifers (or any single tree species), densely planted row on row is not a recipe for a healthy or resilient forest.
