Examples of the maintenance and restoration of wood pasture sites in the UK and the potential for creation

Abstract

While continental Europe may still retain large areas of early mature managed forest, Britain may have far more old trees on ancient woodland or wood pasture sites and in some traditional agricultural landscapes than most other northern European countries. Ancient woodland sites with existing old trees and shrubs and with a continuity of old trees reaching back into the past are of unsurpassed value for their dead and decaying wood communities especially fungi, lichens and invertebrates. Our priority is to perpetuate the continuity of ancient dead and decaying trees on ancient sites and to ensure the continuity of replacement trees through the next millennium.