What is holding back woodland creation?

In our new film we talk to woodland managers, foresters, farmers, rewilders, land owners and campaigners to find out some of the reasons why the UK is not meeting its woodland creation targets.

The target was to plant 30,000 hectares of trees per year but the UK is not even halfway towards this. We know there is political ambition and public support to plant more trees, and we know there is public and private financial support available for tree planting and to establish woodland. So with so many important reasons to plant trees why is the progress so slow? To find out what might be holding back woodland creation, we sought out those people involved in establishing large scale woodland creation schemes (or at least trying to do so). We asked them to explain some of the factors and issues involved.
Many thanks to our guests for being so helpful, thoughtful, and generous with their time.

Caroline Ayre MICFor, Director, Evolving Forests
Harriet Bell Regenerative Farming Lead, Riverford Organic Farmers
John Deakin Head of Trees & Woodlands, National Trust
Prof Alastair Driver FCIEEM, Director, Rewilding Britain
Derek Gow Farmer, Nature Conservationist and Author, keepitwild.co.uk
Ed Green 7th generation farmer Chesterblade Hills Chesterblade Hills, chills.org.uk
Gabriel Hemery, Forest Scientist, author and CEO of the Sylva Foundation
Liz Nicholson, Chartered Environmentalist, Managing Director- Nicholsons Nicholsonsgb.com, Director, https://lnkd.in/g53M6yft
nick phillips, Principle Forestry Policy Advocate, The Woodland Trust https://lnkd.in/gPUuqhe4

Wood for the Trees is a series of short films on the future of forests from environmentalist film maker Charly Le Marchant and Tom Barnes, of Vastern Timber.
Find out more about the series at woodforthetrees.uk