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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of including fast-growing Sequoia and Giant Redwood trees in the Government’s tree planting and climate change programmes.

The UK has a robust and widely welcomed forestry standard in place – the UK Forestry Standard. This is the UK governments’ guide to sustainable forestry. It is based on international scientific evidence. The relevant public authority in each UK country assesses woodland creation proposals against this standard before giving approval to such schemes. This robust regulatory framework provides a high level of scrutiny to protect landscapes and the wider environment to ensure the right tree is planted in the right place for the right reason.

Both species are included in the Ecological Site Classification Decision Support System to aid the selection of species suited to site conditions. It is accessible online via a web browser to help guide forest managers and planners to select ecologically suited species to sites.

There is some limited experience of growing both species in British conditions. The Coast Redwood is available from some forest nurseries and is being used by Forestry England on land they manage.