Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, where saplings planted to meet EIP25 interim targets will be sourced from.

Defra’s Nature for Climate Fund continues to invest working to increase the availability of domestically grown saplings for woodland creation through its Sector Capacity project. Forestry Commission publish annually the Tree Supply Report and Tree Nursery Directories to bring visibility to the market and work closely with the nurseries to assess trends in the market. There is an increasingly strong supply of trees from across the UK and beyond, as highlighted in the Tree Supply Report.

Through the Tree Supply Report, we estimate that over 161 million trees were grown in Great Britain in 24/25, 1,000,000 more than the previous year. This has built up resilience in our seed and tree supply, improving ability to meet the interim target of reaching 16.5% tree canopy and woodland cover by 2050. The Nature for Climate Fund funded grants this financial year of up to £7.8 million capital investment in tree production through the Tree Production Capital Grant; £7.8 million supporting innovation in tree production through the Tree Production Innovation Fund and £871K supporting tree seed sourcing through the Seed Sourcing Grant. We have also invested in Forestry England developing a state-of-the-art new Seed processing unit at Delamere. As well as processing seed for use in the nation’s forests, this facility will continue to make surplus seed from a limited number of species available to the private sector.