The United Kingdom

The United Kingdom is less deforested than most countries in Europe. According to history, woodland would have predominated much of the country, but trees such as oak, ash and lime have dominated most forests. On the other hand, 90% of this cover has been lost from past 5,000 years due to the need of firewood, clearance for agriculture, and due to terrible management by humans. Total woodland makes up 2.5% of the land area of Great Britain, since 45% of the ancient and semi natural woodland that existed in 1945, has been lost since that time.

Currently government of UK has a policy aiming to increase woodland cover, plantations of exotic species, and native woodland for production and environmental purposes. Each year they have different forest creation projects that tend to plant 5,000 hectors of new native woodland. Some of the forest creation projects are the National Forest, Central Scotland Forest, and the Millennium Forest.

Forests in the UK are divided between private and public. Government owned forests service manages about 35% of the country’s woodland, 10% is owned by public voluntary bodies, 20% is owned by farmers, and the rest 35% is owned by other private industries.

Currently the UK produces around 15% of its timber needs from domestic forests, and efforts have brought and increase in the timber industry. It is expected that the volume of wood will be increase from a 9 million cubic meters per year today to 15 million cubic meters per year by the year 2020.

Since, more animals and plants depend on woodland, which includes about 300 vascular plants and 5,000 animal species, the nation’s biodiversity is deeply affected. An important portion of woodland that remains today is under poor management and biodiversity has decrease many times. In 1990, a government survey was taken and it showed a drop of almost 20% in species diversity.

Road building in the UK has brought a major threat to its woodland. There are many causes behind this, which include lack of protection and essential value given to nature, road building policy, priority of economic interests, and political structures and relations.