We need to bring back the wildwoods of Britain to fight climate change | Isabella Tree

Planting a vast northern forest will be expensive and inefficient. Far better to allow nature to do the job itselfEarlier this year the government announced plans for a new northern forest. Under the auspices of the Woodland Trust, an area that stretches 120 miles from Hull to Liverpool will be planted with 50 million trees over the next 25 years. In March, the first trees were put in the ground on hills above Bolton, in Greater Manchester, by an "army of planters" composed of local community members, volunteers, funding bodies and MPs.There is, certainly, an urgent environmental need to get trees back in our landscape. We lost more ancient woods - tens of thousands of them - in the 40 years after the second world war than in the previous 400 years. The UK has only 13% woodland cover, compared with the European average of 37%. Quite apart from being beautiful things, trees - like all vegetation - absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, and the northern forest is intended to help the UK government meet its carbon emissions target by 2050. Continue reading...