revitalising the woodlands of wales€¦ · written by dr trevor dines with contributions from...

Revitalising the woodlands of Wales

Patron: HRH The Prince of Wales

Plantlife Cymru, Uned 14, Llys Castan Ffordd Y Parc, Parc Menai, Bangor Gwynedd LL57 4FD Tel: +44 (0)1248 670691 Email: [email protected]

www.plantlife.org.uk

Speaking up for Wales’ wild plants

We work to protect wild plants and fungi, and keep the colour in our countryside. Wild plants play a vital role in everyone’s lives, cleaning our air and water, and feeding and sheltering insects, birds and animals. They are also critical in the fight against climate change. Plantlife Cymru manages nature reserves, influences policy and legislation, and runs events to help people celebrate wild plants and fungi. We also work with others to promote wild plant conservation for the benefit of all.

Patron: HRH The Prince of Wales

Plantlife Cymru, Uned 14, Llys Castan Ffordd Y Parc, Parc Menai, Bangor Gwynedd LL57 4FD Tel: +44 (0)1248 670691 Email: [email protected]

www.plantlife.org.uk

Citation Plantlife (2012) Forestry Recommissioned: Revitalising the woodlands of Wales Plantlife: Salisbury

Contributors Written by Dr Trevor Dines with contributions from Joanna Bromley, Andrew Byfield, Dr Jenny Duckworth, Nicola Hutchinson, Dr Deborah Long, Richard Moyse, Neil Sanderson, Sophie Thomas, Tim Wilkins and Ray Woods.

4 Contents

Our unique geographic position in the face of prevailing Atlantic weather, together with our varied geology and landscapes, has given rise to an outstanding diversity of wooded habitats for our relatively small land area. Some Welsh woodlands are of global importance.

5Forestry Recommissioned

Executive summary If you go down to the woods today What’s gone wrong with our woodlands? 1. Inappropriate management 2. Atmospheric pollution – nitrogen and sulphur dioxide 3. Planting: wrong tree, wrong place The declining value of Welsh woodlands Plantlife recommends Conclusion References

Photography Cover – Ganllwyd © Rory Francis Waterfall, Elan Valley, Powys © Graham Stephen Coleman/Fotolibra Wood anemone © Laurie Campbell Pied Flycatcher © David Kjaer/RSPB Images A typical woodland ride © Robert Pickett/Plantlife Narrow-leaved helleborine © Bob Gibbons/Natural Image Rhododendron © Laurie Campbell Lobaria pulmonaria © Jan Holm/Fotolibra Bluebell Wood, Powys © Edwin Edwards/Fotolibra Pearl-bordered fritillary © Ernie Janes Acorns © Beth Newman/Plantlife

6 8 10 22 24 28 32 35 36

2|3 7 9 13 15 19 21 25 29 34

Contents

6 Executive summary

Executive summary

Plantlife’s vision is for a woodland estate where there are economic incentives for private woodland owners to manage their woods more actively – and where woodlands in public ownership are managed to the highest standard to deliver to the public beautiful landscapes rich in wildlife.

This report is about managing woodlands in Wales so that they deliver for us and for our wildlife. Native woodland is not a rare and restricted habitat in Wales. In 1919, when the Forestry Commission was set up, the forests of Wales covered less than 5% of the land area.1 Today, they have reached around 14%,2 with Welsh Government targets set at planting an additional 100,000 hectares in the next 20 years, bringing the total coverage to 19%. Yet, even at its current size, Wales has six times more native woodland than lowland heathland, and twice as much as our lowland acid grassland.3

However, only 7% of priority woodland wildlife is stable or increasing.4 Woodland plants such as spreading bellflower and lungwort lichens continue their decline.

So why are the woodlands of Wales losing their life and vitality? They aren’t being bulldozed, concreted over or burned down – they are still standing and you can still walk through them. The simple answer is that too many of our woods are neglected, mismanaged or under-managed. This is the major threat to their plant life and therefore to the other wildlife that depends upon a rich woodland flora.

It would seem that Government ambition to create woodland at a rate of around 5,000 hectares per year is too simplistic an approach. More woodland is a well-intentioned aim but what we really need is better woodland.

If our native woodland – much of it of international importance – is to be protected and enjoyed by future generations, then all woodland owners need to take a more informed and more active approach to woodland management. We do not need more woodland empty of wildlife and devoid of natural beauty.

If you go down to the woods today8

Go for a walk in many Welsh woodlands today and you are likely to find them

A lack of management can often mean that sunlight no longer reaches the woodland floor. Rarely grazed by livestock, lowland woodlands are frequently overgrown with brambles and suffering from high levels of nutrient pollution, which encourages plants like nettles instead of our specialist woodland flora.

But they needn’t be like this. Think of our Atlantic oak rainforests, garlanded with mosses and lichens and home to pied flycatcher, tree pipit and wood warbler, or our ash woods with their rare whitebeams, small-leaved limes and carpets of ramsons, bluebells, primroses and wood anemones. Where would you rather be?

dark

...

overgrownand quiet

Pied flycatcher has declined by 50% in Wales over the past 25 years1


10 What’s gone wrong with our woodlands?

Throughout history, Welsh woodlands have been used for everything from grazing livestock to harvesting timber, from hunting animals to gathering fruits and fungi. As recently as a hundred years ago, they were still being regularly used as a source of hurdles, poles, tan bark and charcoal. Bracken, leaf litter and branches were collected for animal bedding and fodder, and woodlands provided shelter and pasture for livestock and deer.

The idea of the wild wood and that a squirrel could travel at treetop from the Severn to the Wash, is strongly imprinted in British culture. This has resulted in a tendency to treat our remaining woodlands as distinct entities from the surrounding landscape, be it grassland, heathland or wetland, and to manage them separately. However, evidence suggests that forest landscapes in Britain are likely to have been a complicated mosaic of habitats, both wooded and open,5 like the mixture of habitats seen, for example, in parts of Snowdonia today. Many moorlands and grasslands were part of a wider wild-wood mosaic, becoming more expansive and open over time with expanding agriculture and the increasing impacts of human activity.

1. Inappropriate management


All this human activity kept woodlands open and diverse – there were glades, patches of grassland, recently cut areas and some high trees. Far from harming woodland wildlife, this active management kept our woodlands rich and varied, providing opportunities for many different fungi, plants and animals to flourish.

Today, traditional management of woodlands has declined dramatically. Coppicing is now rare and much of our woodland is either fenced off, preventing access to grazing animals, or is used by unsustainable numbers of animals. Financial support from various woodland grant schemes has hastened this process by encouraging the fencing off of woodland and infilling gaps in the woodland canopy with new tree planting. Under these conditions, often unmanaged and ungrazed, many of our woodlands have developed into high forest, devoid of structural complexity, habitat diversity and, crucially, light.

80,000 hectares of native woodland in Wales is unmanaged and just 12% is actively managed for timber.2

Most woodland plants are not species of deep shade, but prefer light conditions. This not only applies to woodland flowers but also to lichens, mosses and liverworts.


Traditional woodland managementThe traditional practice of coppicing opens up the woodland canopy, letting in light and creating conditions suitable for the majority of woodland plants. Actively managed coppice in lowland Wales is especially valued for its displays of spring flowers such as wood anemone, primrose, early purple orchid and wood violets. Rarer species associated with the early regrowth of coppice, such as spreading bellflower and bastard balm, have declined as a result of the reduction in coppicing.

The scale of coppicing in Wales is not widely appreciated. Much historic coppicing was carried out by felling coupes (or blocks) of many hectares at once, especially in areas with woodland industries feeding charcoal furnaces or cutting oak for tan bark. In the lower Wye valley (Monmouthshire), for example, entire hillsides were cut at once with virtually no standards remaining.6

In well-managed coppice woodland, different coupes are cut at different times, providing a rich diversity of habitats over time within the same woodland. As coupes mature, different plants come and go, providing ever changing conditions for other wildlife. For many species, especially invertebrates such as butterflies and moths, it’s the diversity of structure as well as diversity of plants that provide ideal conditions.7 The violets that flourish in early coppice cycles provide food for pearl-bordered fritillaries,7 while the waved carpet moth relies on the shrubs of more mature coppice.8 In Hendre Wood (Monmouthshire), the future survival of a priority moth, the drab looper, depends on a continuous supply of its food plant, wood spurge, growing in sheltered areas. These areas are provided by maintaining clearings and coppicing within the core area of the wood.9

The solutions

Specialist woodland birds also need a diversity of woodland structure. Some, such as willow warbler (which has declined by 51% in Wales since the 1980s), prefer the open areas of early successional and transitional woodland, while spotted flycatcher (which has declined by 58% in Wales since the 1980s) require mature woodland with an open structure.1

Rides and tracks are all part of an actively-managed woodland, especially ones from which coppice and timber are being extracted. These open areas are home to one of Wales’ rarest plants, spreading bellflower. This species has declined drastically and without help is likely to become extinct in Wales in the next few years: of 17 sites surveyed in 2008, just six flowering plants were found in the wild.10 At most old sites, it’s the loss of active coppice and woodland management that has caused the decline. Like so many woodland plants, spreading bellfower needs open, sunny conditions; warm banks along woodland rides are ideal. It also needs disturbed soil for its seeds to germinate. As management declines, woods become shaded and soils lie undisturbed, their precious seeds buried forever.

Just over the border, a new study for the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust of wild daffodils11 found that the considerable decline in these celebrated flowers is due to:

• the decline in sustainable woodland management leading to heavily-shaded coppices. Where coppicing or thinning was reintroduced, wild daffodil populations recovered.

• a decline in grazing allowing brambles especially to shade out daffodils and increase competition at root-level. Some of the densest wild daffodil populations were found in woodland where the understory was cleared annually.


Woodland restorationThe excited new owners of a woodland on the Lleyn peninsula recently contacted Plantlife with some news. They had found orchids in their woods which appeared to be narrow-leaved helleborine (pictured right). With only five other known sites in Wales, this was a stunning discovery.

Even more remarkably, the woodland was a Plantation on Ancient Woodland Site (PAWS). Alongside the orchids were non-native trees such as sitka spruce, larch and sweet chestnut. As well as the dense shade cast by the conifers, the woodland had not been actively managed for many years and the ancient track through the wood where the orchids were growing was overgrown with young trees and shrubs, especially grey willows, further shading out the plants.

The woodland is owned by a group of individuals with a keen interest in wildlife. With the help of Plantlife they are undertaking a careful programme of conifer and willow removal to open up the canopy along the rides. This will also encourage other flowers, such as honeysuckle, bugle and common spotted orchids, which in turn attract butterflies such as speckled wood and orchid-pollinating bees. The latter are especially important as, without them, the helleborine cannot set any seed. Since this work has started the number of flowering helleborine plants has doubled.

The success on the Lleyn vividly demonstrates that correct management can result in thriving populations of rare plants, so giving hope for other sites in Wales where population numbers are down to just a handful of plants.


Woodfuel

Woodfuel could provide a significant and economic solution to the management of our neglected woodlands in the future.

It represents a low-carbon source of energy, would reduce the UK’s negative impacts on forests overseas and could potentially increase the commercial value of under-utilised woodlands. While the Welsh Government’s woodland strategy supports the development of renewable energy from woodfuel,2 there is no specific target for woodfuel use in Wales, unlike in Scotland and England. Instead focus is placed on capital support for businesses, through the Wood Energy Business Scheme, to install woodfuel heating systems and processing equipment – and so develop the renewable wood heat market across Wales. If undertaken sustainably, with safeguards to regulate both the rate of clearance and protect old wood features (such as epiphytic mosses and lichens), harvesting of woodfuel could represent the single most important economic activity to reinvigorate our woodland wildlife.

The new Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI)12 is an initiative likely to significantly increase demand for woodfuel and revolutionise the renewable heat sector. The potential for the RHI to stimulate active management in small, privately owned woodlands is an exciting opportunity for a return of working woodlands and wildlife.


Grazing stock in woodlandsManaged animal grazing encourages plant species diversity, maintains habitat diversity and allows natural regeneration. Other wildlife benefits directly from woodland grazing; one factor behind the 50% decline in pied flycatcher in Wales is the reduction or cessation of grazing in upland oak woodlands, leading to overcrowded shrub and field layers.1

Balance is the key. The situation has become somewhat polarised, with woodlands either unfenced and highly overgrazed (especially in the uplands by sheep) or fenced-off and undergrazed (particularly in the lowlands).

Permanent stock exclusion by fencing is a practice encouraged by agri-environment schemes and can have a devastating effect on woodland lichen flora.13 Complete removal of grazing also often leads to domination by holly, ivy and bramble, again at the expense of woodland lichens. The total removal of grazing can cause serious problems to species growing on smaller rocks, especially with overgrowth by bramble which can smother boulders up to 2m high. One threatened moss, prostrate signal-moss, is confined to north Wales where it grows on low slabs and small rocks set in the woodland floor. Here it is very easily overgrown and populations have declined where grazing has been removed from protected sites.6

Conversely, allowing too much grazing causes severe damage. Not only are seedling trees and shrubs damaged, halting the succession of mature trees and the development of an understorey, but ground flora can suffer too; for example scarce turf-moss has been damaged at some sites where sheep have been let in from adjacent improved land (S. Bosanquet pers. comm.).

In order to deliver wildlife benefits, controlled grazing with the right livestock and at the right frequency needs to be reinstated into many woodlands.

Domestic stock can be moved in and out of woodlands in response to the particular management needs of individual woods and the species for which they are home. This requires more effort on the part of landowners and managers, and detailed site-based advice for scheme applicants can be difficult to provide in agri-environment schemes such as Glastir. Woodland grazing as a management tool is to be included in the new Glastir Woodland Management Scheme, but sufficient incentives and targeting need to be in place to ensure uptake in the right areas.

But the outcomes far outweigh these difficulties – careful livestock grazing will deliver improved habitats for species in our woods.


Rhododendron’s impact on native species and habitats, especially bryophytes and lichens, is well known.14,15 In Wales, action is required to control rhododendron at 45 SSSIs (5% of the total) if their favourable status is to be maintained.16 The spread of rhododendron is difficult and costly to prevent; control in the Snowdonia National Park is estimated at £10million.15

While payments for eradication are available through mechanisms such as Glastir and the Invasive Non-native Species Group, such work needs to be at a landscape scale and involve all woodland owners in the affected area for control to be effective in the long-term. In the Snowdonia National Park, such an approach is being undertaken along with novel low-impact control measures such as stem injection with herbicide.15 In heathland areas where rhododendron has not yet achieved total coverage, recovery of the ground flora using this technique can be spectacular.

As well as the impact of invasive non-native plants, the upsurge in pests and diseases has continued. The spread of Phytophthora ramorum, a fungus-like pathogen of plants that can kill and damage trees and shrubs, is perhaps the most alarming. Although currently of urgent concern to the forestry and horticultural industries (especially its impact on larch), the potential for spread into native wild species such as bilberry is of significant concern; this has been reported in Staffordshire and if it were to spread the entire character of the Welsh upland landscape could change. This possibility only increases the urgent need to remove rhododendron from our woodlands, where it is a major potential carrier of the disease.

The impact of rhododendron is a major threat to many woodlands.

Managing rhododendron in woodlands


Welsh woodlands are home to an exceptional range of lichens, mosses and liverworts – a diversity of global importance.

Small, rare and very, very vulnerable

Some of these are extremely rare, however, and are found in just a handful of sites. Unlike birds, animals and insects, of course, these jewels can’t move around to new trees or other woodlands if the conditions change or become unsuitable for them – they are stuck with whatever gets thrown at them. And that makes them very vulnerable.

In the worst cases, innocent felling of individual trees can mean extinction of an entire species. The lichens Calicium adspersum and Blarneya hibernica are each found on single oak trees in Wales, while Pseudocyphellaria intricata occurs on just two young ash trees in Caernarfonshire. The felling of sycamore could decimate one of the four Welsh colonies of lesser squirrel-tail moss. And the recent construction of a new stretch of the A470 near Builth Wells led to the felling of trees with pelargonium lichen (just seven trees with this lichen now remain in Wales), and a 300-year-old oak tree with sun-loving lemon tart lichen being replanted the wrong way round, resulting in the death of the lichen.

These sites and individual trees must be given the recognition and protection they deserve. Plantlife is creating an inventory of all known sites where priority species grow to improve their conservation. We are also lobbying for improvements to the planning system and for greater international protection on a par with, for example, great crested newts. Only when this has been done will a single chainsaw not pose the risk of extinction.


Like the wild flowers of open habitats, the greatest diversity of woodland flora is found in woodland with low nutrient levels. There is unequivocal evidence from a number of studies that nitrogen enrichment encourages a narrower number of species to flourish in woodlands at the expense of many characteristic woodland species. In areas of high nutrient levels, species such as nettle, bramble and wild garlic out-compete other species, so contributing to the homogenisation of our woodlands.

Atmospheric nitrogen deposition, mainly from nitrogen oxides and ammonia emissions, alters acidity and nutrient balances and impacts on both ground and epiphytic flora within woodlands, as well as soil fungi. Unfortunately, as woodlands and forests scavenge air pollutants effectively, the effects of nitrogen deposition to woodlands are generally greater than those for other habitat types.

Once these nutrients enter the woodland ecosystem, they become locked-in to the cycle of growth and decay. In addition, as traditional management to remove the natural build up of organic matter has ceased, this has created a cycle in which the build-up of nutrients in the soil results in faster growth of vigorous plants and hence the production of ever greater amounts of organic matter. Many rarer woodland plants favour little or no leaf litter build-up.

2. Atmospheric pollution – nitrogen and sulphur dioxide

Just as nutrient levels have taken years to increase, they will take time to be reduced, but this does not mean it is impossible.

93% to 98% of Britain’s woodland area is growing under excessive nitrogen deposition

Oliver Rackham provides evidence for historic removal of nutrients from woodlands as a result of previous management techniques. In eastern England, the length of time between coppice harvests increased from an average of six years in the 13th century to 14 or 15 years by the 19th. It’s likely that part of the reason for this was falling soil fertility, meaning that it took longer for the coppice branches to grow to a usable size. A recent study33 supports this notion, concluding that decreasing the rotation length of chestnut coppice enhances the depletion of soil nutrients.


In some parts of Wales, a patch of woodland the size of a football field annually receives the equivalent of six agricultural bags of nitrogen fertiliser from the air

Many woodland lichens and some bryophytes are very sensitive to air pollution, with sulphur dioxide or acid rain being especially damaging. Only areas that remained clean through the past two centuries today harbour rich epiphytic floras. As well as direct poisoning by sulphur dioxide, milder acidification has selectively removed acid sensitive species in high rainfall areas further from pollution centres. The result is that across large areas of Britain the lichen flora has been effectively sterilised.6

Although this acidifying pollution has now declined and large-scale recolonisation by rapidly growing lichen species is underway, this does not include any rare species which have been lost for the foreseeable future. Even in areas that were once polluted but now have pristine air, like south west and north Wales, some exceptionally sensitive mosses and lichens such as the attractive leafy Pseudocyphellaria species27 and scarce turf moss (S. Bosanquet pers. comm.) remain threatened with extinction.

By restoring traditional woodland management practices, we can start to reduce the nutrient loads from our woodlands. But it is only through repeated coppice cycles over a period of years that serious nutrient depletion will begin to take effect. This timescale should not be a barrier to coppicing or reintroducing grazing; our woodlands have been managed in these ways for hundreds of years and, if we are serious in our desire to have a diverse woodland flora, then similar long-term management objectives should be set for our woodlands today.

Measures which reduce the run-off of nutrients from farmland and the release of nitrates and ammonia into the atmosphere from transport emissions, agricultural fertiliser use and slurry would help reduce the pressure on woodlands and other habitats. However, increased removal of woodland biomass as a result of increased management, such as coppicing, will reduce nutrient loads appreciably.

In the case of atmospheric nitrogen and sulphur dioxide deposition, Government must work to link policy on agriculture, transport and industry to reduce the serious impacts they pose. Woodland management alone cannot address these problems; they arrive from outside the wood and must be addressed outside the wood. The issue of acid rain is largely forgotten and that of nitrogen deposition largely ignored. If we fail to act though, our woodlands will never return to their former splendour.

The solutions


3. Planting: wrong tree, wrong placeNew woodland creationThe Welsh Government plans to increase woodland cover in Wales from 14% of the land area today to 19% by 2031. This will require the creation of another 100,000 hectares of woodland at a rate of 5,000 hectares per year, half of which will be native woodland and the remainder mixed conifer and broadleaf. This will result in major land use changes in Wales.

The mapping tool developed by Forestry Commission Wales and the Countryside Council for Wales to plan the location of new woodland planting and reduce conflicts with priority species and habitats is to be applauded. However, this traffic-light risk-based approach on a country level can only ever be a crude sifting mechanism to identify inappropriate planting sites; it does not replace the need for detailed site-based EIA assessments, as are required for bog and heathland restoration from woodland. There are already cases (eg in Monmouthshire and Denbighshire) where Glastir woodland planting is taking place on species-rich semi-natural grassland.

Additionally, the farming community is yet to fully embrace the idea of planting woodland on productive farmland, so there is a strong tendency for less productive farmland to be targeted for planting, placing even more pressure on marginal and upland habitats that are valuable for wildlife. Decisions over where to plant must be sustainable in the long term and support the development of fully functioning ecosystems and ecological networks.

Diversification with invasive non-native broadleaved treesAs well as plans for new woodland creation, Welsh Government policy also aims to increase the diversity of tree species in mixed woodland, including that created with biodiversity as the main objective.17 However, Plantlife is very concerned that invasive or potentially invasive non-native species are currently recommended for planting in mixed woodland. Such species include eucalyptus, grey alder, red alder, Italian alder, southern beech and red oak.18 Some of these are known to be invasive in parts of Britain, with high rates of seed production, seedling establishment and growth, and they pose a risk to the native biodiversity of any habitat in which they are planted. Red oak and Italian alder, in particular, have been identified as critical and urgent priorities for full risk assessments to be undertaken by the GB Non-Native Species Secretariat.19

Instead, we believe that the emphasis should be on improving woodland networks and connectivity to allow the natural regeneration and spread of native species as they adapt to our changing climate. Our wildlife is both adaptable and resilient to change. It should be given every opportunity to respond to climate change without additional pressures from highly competitive non-native species. We cannot predict exactly how non-native species will behave in the wild in the future and current policy runs the risk of widespread introduction of invasive species.

Accurate and detailed planning is needed so that the right species of trees are planted in the right places and the native biodiversity of both woodlands and open habitats is not compromised


The solutionsA Woodland Framework for Wales Taking a lead from the CCW Upland Framework, a Woodland Framework is needed to plan in detail the long-term goals and aspirations for our woodland estate in Wales over the next 100 years. Taking into account economics, landscape and wildlife, habitat networks should be identified that maximise the diversity of woodland management in any one area, including where appropriate:

• More intensively managed native lowland woodland, including coppicing and biomass extraction, to benefit flowering plants like bluebells and wood anemones.

• More carefully managed native woodland, with grazing integrated with surrounding grassland and heathland, to benefit woodland edge species like spreading bellflower.

• Non-intervention high canopy woodland, with careful grazing to manage invasive natives like bramble and holly and allow the ground flora to thrive.

• Non-intervention high canopy woodland, with little or no grazing, to allow lichens, mosses and liverworts to flourish.

• Open pasture woodland with sufficient re-planting to ensure continuity of veteran trees and their rare lichens and bryophytes.

• Development of new woodland through natural regeneration so the widest range of wildlife is supported during the succession from open to wooded landscapes.

• Establishment of new woodland through carefully targeted planting to reconnect woodland fragments and restore lost habitat.

Development of such a framework would draw on the mapping of woodland habitat networks by CCW20 and Important Plant Area approaches. These can be used to identify where new woodland planting is best directed to increase habitat connectivity and expand the remaining fragments of best-quality woodland. It is also important to use this network approach to avoid fragmenting open priority habitats in the rush to plant more woodland.


Important Plant Areas (IPAs): the Cambrian mountains woodlandPlantlife co-ordinates the Important Plant Area project, working with partners to identify internationally important areas for wild plants across the globe.

In 2007, Plantlife published a list of the UK’s Important Plant Areas.21 Of the 32 IPAs identified in Wales to date, nine are recognised for their woodland features, highlighting the importance of woodlands for plant conservation. Their protection and management contributes towards the UK’s international biodiversity commitments – IPAs are an integral part of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, which is part of the Convention on Biological Diversity, with objectives to achieve by 2020.

The Cambrian mountains IPA, stretching from Machynlleth in the north to Cilycwm in the south, was selected for its internationally important Atlantic woodland and the diverse range of lichen and bryophyte communities that live there. The profusion of species in these Welsh woodlands rivals the diversity of some of the world’s richest tropical rainforests: in Carn Gafallt, an upland oak woodland that is part of the Cambrian mountains IPA, 446 species of bryophytes, lichens and fungi have been recorded.22 Core IPA areas have been identified with Zones of Opportunity around and between them. These Zones of Opportunity are areas that, if managed appropriately, have the correct environmental conditions to allow the Atlantic oak woodland plant communities to spread and thrive. Identifying Zones of Opportunity for management enables land managers to prioritise management to the most appropriate areas.

It is important that the proposed woodland expansion in Wales does not come at the expense of priority open habitats. Instead, woodland expansion should be a key tool in delivering fully functioning habitat networks, by linking woodlands to increase their resilience to environmental change while at the same time protecting the integrity of other Welsh habitats, such as heathlands and grasslands. Adopting a planned approach, based on survey and management practices appropriate to maintaining full woodland diversity, is vital to ensure that the iconic habitats of Wales are in good shape for the next millennia.

28 The declining value of Welsh woodlands

The plant conservation interest and importance of Welsh woodlands can be seen as a pyramid with the few very best ancient sites at the top, a strong cohort of ancient woodlands in the middle and then the majority of wooded areas being currently of much lower importance for wildlife but with huge potential.

Today, the wooded area of Wales is estimated to be 304,000 hectares, 14.3% of Wales’s land area.23 Of this total, 43% is non-native coniferous (predominantly sitka spruce) forest with just 38% being broadleaved and 4% mixed woodland with our characteristic oaks and ash, bluebells, wood anemones, violets and primroses. Of the natural and semi-natural woodland and scrub in Wales, just 9% is protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).24 More worryingly, only 32% of this area is considered to be in favourable condition.25

The remainder of our woodland is recent broadleaved and conifer plantations which are of much lower conservation importance. Further planting of trees will add to this category of woodland. Planting new woodlands will not, for centuries, replicate the conservation importance of our ancient forests with their veteran trees.

The pearl-bordered fritillary, which likes open woodland such as coppice, has declined by 80% since 1985.7

Of all woodlands in Wales, about 20% occur on the site of ancient or long-established woodlands.2 Of these historic woodlands, just over a quarter (27,000 hectares) are planted with non-native species (Plantations on Ancient Woodland Sites, or PAWS). Restoration of these must be a priority, as the ability for the woodland to recover diminishes with time. But this largely depends on ownership and whether commercial production is the main driver for management.

With ancient woodland being of such high conservation value it is essential that it is protected from loss and damage, and that most of the very best ancient woodlands are protected by domestic and international nature conservation designations.

30 The declining value of Welsh woodlands

• Up to half the global population of our native bluebells is found in Britain.26

• 41% of extinct lichens in Wales were associated with woodland.27

• Of all habitats in Wales, woodland has the second highest diversity of flowering plants and ferns.28

• Wales is one of the richest countries for mosses and liverworts in Europe, and of significance at a world level.29


The Countryside Survey focuses on changes in the British countryside, based on repeated surveys carried out between 1978 and 2007. During this period, although the area of broadleaved woodland in Wales remained unchanged, the results indicate a significant decrease in broadleaved woodland species richness in Wales; plants of open canopies and woodland management declined, while nutrient-hungry taller plants increased.30 The change in species recorded indicates that Welsh woodlands are losing their variety of plants and becoming more homogeneous.

In Wales the Countryside Survey also found that the richness of butterfly larval food plants in lowland broadleaved, mixed and yew woodland decreased between 1990 and 2007, reflecting a reduction of an average three species per plot over the 17-year period. This and the increase in more competitive species indicate that substantial ecological impacts on the woodland ecosystem are occurring.

Two recent studies tell a tale of declining variety in woodland plants – on a walk in the woods today you will see fewer plant species. Our woods are losing their variety and identity.

Welsh wood stitchwort has disappeared from Radnorshire, Merionethshire, Cardiganshire and Breconshire.32

A study into long-term ecological change in woodlands across Britain31 focused on 103 woods, which had originally been surveyed in 1971. It reassessed the same plots in 2001 and found that overall species richness in the ground flora had declined markedly, with a 36% decrease per plot and a 12% decrease per wood. Woodland specialists such as wood sorrel, primrose and sanicle had decreased in frequency, with 56 of the 72 woodland specialists becoming significantly less common. There were small increases in frequency of shade-tolerant species such as holly, and a general shift towards more shade-tolerant vegetation.

Plants are the foundation upon which all nature depends. As our plants have declined, so has our wildlife. In particular, many woodland birds and butterflies have declined in numbers and range.1,7 This coincident decline of woodland plants, butterflies and birds indicates fundamental and important changes are happening within our woodlands that need to be addressed.

32 Recommendations

Plantlife recommends…This report focuses on the need for more active woodland management as the major solution to the decline in woodland wildlife. While there are many reasons to want to increase the extent of woodland cover, planting more woods only has a minor role to play in the recovery of wildlife compared with improved management.

Woodland extent: the right trees in the right placesIn the past, important wildlife has been damaged or destroyed by planting sites with conifer crops. Newborough Warren, for example, is a globally important sand-dune system on Anglesey with a wide range of habitats from shingle and dune ridges to dune slacks, grassland and scrub, along with fens and salt marshes. The dunes are home to an exceptional flora, including internationally protected species such as petalwort and shore dock, as well as golden hair-lichen, endemic dune helleborine and dwarf adder’s-tongue fern, and invertebrates including small red damselfly and mining bees. Despite this diversity and complexity, over half the dune area was planted with conifers between 1947 and 1965, destroying the dune flora and fauna and permanently altering the character, soils and hydrology of the site.

Given Government ambition to increase woodland area it is vital that the mistakes of the past are rectified and that no further damaging errors are made.

• Woodland creation schemes should only target landscape areas that are essentially wooded in character, and seek to enlarge or link existing areas of ancient semi-natural woodland, following environmental and archaeological assessment of proposed planting sites.

• Wherever possible, native woodland creation schemes should take place through natural regeneration and follow ecological guidelines, such as Plantlife’s Zones of Opportunity approach – similar to the Forestry Commission Forest Habitat Networks but with a focus on the needs of plants and fungi.

• Grant schemes for woodland creation need effective and detailed environmental impact assessments to ensure that no wildlife-rich, open habitat is lost, such as bog, heathland or species-rich grassland. While the Forestry Commission’s Map Viewer for the Glastir Woodland Creation Grant is a good start, it needs more refinement to reduce the amount of consultation needed for applicants.

• To encourage a mosaic of species-rich habitats, new woodland planting schemes should endeavour to keep 25% of the overall woodland area as open habitat.

• No invasive or potentially invasive non-native broadleaved tree species should be used in any woodland creation scheme, or used to increase the tree diversity of any mixed woodland.

• Protection for all ancient woodland, veteran trees and other priority woodland sites, including Important Plant Areas, should be afforded through any future reform of the planning system.


Increasing and improving woodland managementWe need to get Welsh woods back into good heart. This will require Government supporting the private sector through incentives and grants, as well as action on the Public Forest Estate.

Government is, and should remain, a major woodland landowner and manager. The Public Forest Estate should remain in public ownership, to ensure Welsh people continue to benefit from woodland managed for the long term. Publicly owned forests, managed by the Forestry Commission Wales, should serve to be exemplars of wildlife management, a public good, rather than try to demonstrate excellence in timber production which can safely be left to the private sector.

• Increase the area of certified woodland across Wales, aiming to achieve at least 75% by 2020.

• All publicly funded woodland management should require an assessment of botanical value and of the impact of operational objectives on plant diversity.

• Government should lead by example to fully restore all Planted Ancient Woodland Sites (PAWS) in publically owned woodlands, including complete removal of non-native trees.

• Woodland grant schemes should provide at least 80% standard costs for key ancient semi-natural woodland areas, woodland Important Plant Areas, and other areas with woodland plants of conservation concern.

• Community-driven environmental planning and land management should prioritise the conservation of rare, threatened and internationally important woodland flora within their patch.

• Alongside existing initiatives to develop and invest in woodfuel infrastructure and markets, Government should develop a Woodfuel Strategy in order to stimulate a step-change in the sustainable management of woodland, including the setting of a biomass target for under-managed woodlands.

• There should be a strong presumption against the felling and removal of veteran trees.

• Woodland grazing options within Glastir should be targeted to encourage appropriate levels of grazing in woodland Important Plant Areas, through trials where necessary.

• Landscape-scale restoration initiatives should seek to develop (where ecologically appropriate) extensively grazed mosaics of woodland, scrub, grassland and heathland.

• Research is needed to evaluate the role of active management in reducing high nutrient loadings in woodland.

• Government must work to link policy on agriculture, transport and industry to reduce the impacts of nitrogen on air pollution, and the on-going acidification impacts of sulphur dioxide.

• Government should develop a Woodlands for Wales Indicator, based on non-tree plant diversity, to monitor the response to changing management of woodland flora and other ecosystem services such as pollination and food plant resources.

34 Conclusion


Conclusion

People love trees. However, a woodland is so much more than trees. In fact, within a wooded landscape, sometimes less is more.

In the current discussions about the ambition to increase woodland cover and about the value of Welsh woodland, Plantlife believes that the crucial role of management in protecting the conservation value of Welsh woodlands is being neglected. To thrive, woodland wildlife needs well-managed woodlands with veteran trees and a diverse age structure, with open heath and bands of woodland, recreating lost mosaics of different habitats and letting in life.

If managed sustainably, woodlands offer huge benefits in terms of biodiversity, public access, recreation, landscape quality and additional ecosystem services, as well as a supply of timber and other woodland products. For this to happen we need to embrace woodland management as a way of life and re-establish the connections between woodlands and the landscapes in which they sit.

2010 marked a spectacular worldwide failure to halt the loss of species – as a result the UN has declared 2011-2020 the Decade of Biodiversity. We need a major shift in how society both respects and utilises the natural environment in order to meet urgent ambitions, such as that set by Government in Wales to have no further loss of biodiversity by 2020. Species are the currency of environmental success, as increases or decreases in populations of individual species allow us to track the state of ecosystems – and woodland wildlife is no exception.

Unless woodland management is revitalised we will continue to see a net loss of woodland plant diversity and abundance, however many new woodlands we create.

References

References1. Dyda, J. Symes, N. & Lamacraft, D. (2009)

Woodland Management for Birds: a guide to managing woodland for priority birds in Wales. The RSPB, Sandy & Forestry Commission Wales, Aberystwyth.

2. Welsh Assembly Government, Cardiff (2010). Welsh woodlands - their extent, nature and character.

3. Defra (2005). Biodiversity Action Reporting System (online). Accessed 12/1/12 http://ukbars.defra.gov.uk/

4. Welsh Assembly Government, Cardiff (2010). Woodlands for Wales Indicators: March 2010.

5. Vera, F.W.M (2000) Grazing Ecology and Forest History. CABI International: Wallingford.

6. Sanderson, N. (2012). Status of rare woodland plants and lichens. Plantlife: Salisbury.

7. Clarke, S.A., Green, D.G., Bourn, N.A. & Hoare, D.J. (2011). Woodland Management for Butterflies and Moths: A Best Practice Guide. Butterfly Conservation, Wareham.

8. Waved Carpet factsheet, www.butterfly-conservation.org/uploads/waved_carpet.pdf

9. Butterfly Conservation in Wales, Annual Newsletter 2011.

10. de Vere, N., & Satterthwaite, D. (2009). Survey to assess the distribution and abundance of Campanula patula in Wales. Countryside Council for Wales, Bangor.

11. Rowlatt, S. (2011) The Wild Daffodil in Northwest Gloucestershire and Survey 2007–2010. Gloucester Wildlife Trust and Gloucestershire County Council.

12. See Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme (online) www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/meeting_energy/renewable_ener/incentive/incentive.aspx Accessed 17/01/12.

13. Sanderson, N. (2010). Issues raised by recent SSSI Site Condition Monitoring for Lichens. Paper to Plant Link UK.

Endnotes

14. Long, D. & Williams, J. (2007). Rhododendron ponticum: impact on lower plants and fungi communities on the west coast of Scotland. Plantlife, Salisbury.

15. Jackson, P. (2008). Rhododendron in Snowdonia and a strategy for its control. Snowdonia National Park Authority, Penrhyndeudraeth.

16. Dines, T.D. (2010). The Plantlife Wales Newsletter 11 - Invasive aliens in Wales. Pg 1-4 in Welsh Bulletin 86. Botanical Society of the British Isles, Cardiff.

17. Welsh Assembly Government, Cardiff (2010). Policy Position in support of Woodlands for Wales, WAG’s strategy for woodlands and trees: Biodiversity

18. Forestry Commission Wales (2010). A Guide to increasing species diversity in Wales www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/Tree_Species_Guidance20101018.pdf/$FILE/Tree_Species_Guidance20101018.pdf

19. Thomas, S. (2011). Here today, here tomorrow? Horizon scanning for invasive non-native plants. Plantlife: Salisbury.

20. Watts, K., Griffiths, M., Quine, C., Ray D. & Humphrey, J. (2005). Towards a Woodland Habitat Network for Wales. CCW Report 686. Countryside Council for Wales, Bangor & Forestry Commission Wales, Aberystwyth.

21. See: www.plantlife.org.uk/wild_plants/important_plant_areas/

22. Data from RSPB Carn Gafallt reserve records.

23. National Forest Inventory Map 2008 (based on aerial photographs from 2006).

24. Dines, T.D. (2012). The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation in Wales. Plantlife: Salisbury.

25. Countryside Council for Wales (2006). Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) in Wales. Current state of knowledge Report for April 2005 – Mar 2006. http://www.ccw.gov.uk/PDF/SSSIs_Report%20SMALL.pdf

36

Plantlife is a charitable company limited by guarantee, company no. 3166339 Registered in England and Wales, charity no. 1059559 Registered in Scotland, charity no. SC038951 ISBN 978-1-907141-66-9 © March 2012

designbyStudioAde.com

Printed using vegetable based inks by Taylor Brothers Bristol Ltd. T +44 (0)117 924 5452

26. Cheffings, C.M. & Farrell, L. (eds.) (2005) The Vascular Plant Red Data List for Great Britain. Species Status No. 7. JNCC: Peterborough.

27. Woods, R.W. (2010). A Lichen Red Data List for Wales. Plantlife: Salisbury.

28. Dines, T.D. (2008). A Vascular Plant Red Data List for Wales. Plantlife: Salisbury.

29. Rothero, G. P. (2005) Oceanic Bryophytes in Atlantic Oakwoods. Bot. J. Scot. 57: 135-140.

30. Smart, S.M., Allen, D., Murphy, J., Carey, P.D., Emmett, B.A., Reynolds, B., Simpson, I.C., Evans, R.A., Skates, J., Scott, W.A., Maskell, L.C., Norton, L.R., Rossall & M.J., Wood, C. (2009) Countryside Survey: Wales Results from 2007. NERC/Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Welsh Assembly Government, Countryside Council for Wales (CEH Project Number: C03259).

31. Kirby, K.J., Smart, S.M., Black, H.I.J, Bunce, R.G.H., Corney, P.M. & Smithers, R.J. (2005) Long-term ecological changes in British woodland (1971–2001). English Nature Research Reports Number 653. English Nature: Peterborough.

32. Jones, R.A. (2010). Welsh Wood Stitchwort (Stellaria nemorum subsp. montanum) under threat. Welsh Bulletin 86: 13-15. Botanical Society of the British Isles, Cardiff.

33. Rackham, O. (2003). Ancient Woodland: its history, vegetation and uses in England. Castlepoint Press, Dalbeattie

Forestry Recommissioned 37

revitalising the woodlands of wales€¦ · written by dr trevor dines with contributions from...

Documents