Protection of Ancient Woodland and Trees

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered protection of ancient woodland and trees.

I thank not only the Chair and the Minister, but the Back Benchers who have turned up today in support of the debate, which struck an enormous chord when I first started talking to people about it. I also thank the Woodland Trust, which has championed the cause not only of trees, but of ancient woodland and veteran trees for so many years.

Mr Turner, I want to begin by taking us on a magical mystery tour, if you would like to come with me. Imagine that we are walking down a track through a dense coniferous and mixed-species forest. After crunching leaves underfoot for some time, we dive off into the denser part of the forest and suddenly come upon a glade with dappled light filtering through the canopy. There is a carpet of mixed plants beneath our feet. Wild flowers are bursting into bloom and birds are singing. All of a sudden, we see these gargantuan sentries, as if guarding time itself. Huge, enormous oak trees rise out of the carpet. They have a sort of mystery about them, an air of knowingness. They are covered in nooks and crannies. They are filled with creatures such as the vulnerable cardinal click beetle, woodpeckers, brown long-eared bats, wood mice, stag beetles, tawny owls and hornets, and multifarious fungi, moss and lichen, all taking advantage of the antiquated bark. It is reminiscent of Enid Blyton’s “The Magic Faraway Tree”—I do not know whether you have ever read it, Mr Turner.

Those were the first ancient trees that I ever encountered. They were 500 years old and part of the ancient forest of Neroche close to where I live in the Blackdown hills. I was filming them for “Saving the Best Bits”, a film about the special habitats of Somerset, and I have never forgotten the experience. Ancient trees, which form only part of today’s debate, are living relics. The age at which a tree becomes ancient varies with the species as some live longer than others, but the oldest ancient tree, the Fortingall yew in Scotland, is said to be 2,000 to 3,000 years old. Veteran trees are also included in today’s debate. They are not quite as old, but they are on their way to becoming ancient trees. More than 120,000 such trees are listed on the ancient tree inventory.

However, we are talking today about not only specimens, but ancient woodland as a whole. Ancient woodland is our richest terrestrial habitat, but the sad situation is that only 2% of it remains. Something is classed as ancient woodland if it has been on the map since 1600 in England. In Scotland, it is slightly later at 1750. The date is when good maps first came into use, so we were obviously slightly ahead in England. I regard ancient woodland as our equivalent of the rainforest. It represents the last fragments of the wildwood that cloaked the land after the ice age. It is a biodiverse and rich habitat that is home to animals and plants that depend on the stable conditions that ancient woodland provides. It is so rare, however, that it contains many threatened species. The loss of ancient woodlands over the past 100 years has meant that 45 species associated with them have disappeared, which is an absolute tragedy. The woods are not just biodiverse; they are living history books, because they contain fascinating historical features such as medieval boundaries, charcoal hearths and old coppice stools, all of which provide a window into past lives. They are irreplaceable parts of our heritage.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Rebecca Pow]

I will of course give way to my hon. Friend from over the hill.

[Neil Parish]

I very much like the way that my hon. Friend is presenting this debate. We are neighbours and our constituencies share the Blackdown hills. There is ancient woodland there and all across Devon. We need to protect it, and when we need to do something such as dual the A303 or A30, we must find ways of ensuring that we go around ancient woodland rather than through it. We need infrastructure, but we need to maintain our ancient woodland.

[Mr Andrew Turner (in the Chair)]

Order. I have to say that that was a pretty generous intervention, so let us not be quite as generous in future.