Our wonderful woodlands

As they return to their 18th-century glory, David Bellamy celebrates the majesty of Britain's woods 

The day I like to think that I became a botanist is a pin-sharp memory in my mind. I’d travelled from London where I grew up, on a steam train to West Sussex.

I went on the Bluebell Railway — even its name evokes woodland floors awash with drifts of cobalt flowers — to Midhurst. It was here that it struck me for the first time what a wonderful world of plant and animal life our native woods sustain.

I had never experienced the beauty and majesty of an indigenous forest until that spring day when I was ten or 11.

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Mellow fruitfulness: A young stag basks in the morning sunshine yesterday at the National Trust's Dunham Massey estate, near Altrincham in Cheshire

Of course, there were trees in our urban parks which I climbed as a kid. But that day was pivotal. I stood in a coppice, dwarfed by giant oaks, and I listened to the birdsong.

My dad, who was a lay preacher, had often spoken about the glory of God’s natural world. On that day, surrounded by those ancient native oaks, I understood exactly what he meant. Now, 67 years later, I could take you straight back to the spot which inspired my love of the natural world.

I don’t need to tell you how important our native trees are: they’re high-rise hotels in which 320 different species of creepy-crawly live.

They’re home to greedy little inch-worms that dangle on silk threads and hatch the tiny caterpillars that feed the birds. Treecreepers, blackbirds, sparrows and woodpeckers all flourish in our native woodlands. And on a windless day in an oak coppice, if you stand still and silent, you can even hear the frass — the nutrient-rich excrement that insects produce — drop onto the forest floor. 

There it mingles with a rich mulch of leaf compost. Trees are the biggest litter louts of the natural world. They drop their leaves, which in turn nourish worms and provide the nutrients that feed the soil. Hasn’t nature created a wonderful, sustainable habitat?

So, of course, I was glad to learn that we have more woodland in Britain today than we’ve had for centuries. The total area of native trees has doubled since the end of World War I. We now have almost 9,000 square miles of forests in the UK; that amounts to 11.8 per cent of our land.

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Lake placid: The glory of Trossachs National park yesterday, reflected in Loch Lubnaig

It’s all down to tax incentives that have encouraged people to invest in forestry. Historians tell us this figure has not been matched since the 1750s, after which forests were plundered to expand the Royal Navy’s fleet as well as to produce charcoal for gunpowder.

And the Forestry Commission report for the UN food and agriculture department shows that the amount of woodland owned by individuals has grown by 22 per cent in 15 years. It accounts for almost half our tree cover — which, of course, is something to celebrate.

So much new forest is being planted that some areas could match the

15 per cent of woodland recorded in England by the 1086 Domesday Book. But my work won’t be done until 30 per cent of Britain is covered by native trees. That’s my dream, and when I’ve achieved it I’ll retire.

But until then I’ll continue to encourage kids to plant saplings. In four years, 200,000 new native trees — rowan, field maple, ash, oak, poplar, hornbeam and even yew — are flourishing all over Britain thanks to the Tree Appeal, an initiative I helped to launch in schools with Ken Whitley, a local farmer in Durham.

Then there is my work with David Shreeve of the Conservation Foundation, tending trees, young and old.

It is vital that we all join the campaign to plant trees that are native to the UK, otherwise there will be no habitat for the insects, birds, butterflies and flowers that live in them.

Turning point: Plum-tinged foilage at Westonbirt Arboretum yesterday

This, alas, is what happened after World War I. Our woodlands had been stripped bare to serve the industries that helped the war effort.

After the war we planted acres of Sitka spruce. They’re imposters that belong in their native Canada and U.S., not Britain. Great, brooding woods began to march across our countryside, ousting our native yew and juniper.

Sitka spruce grow fast — and under their dense canopy little plant life thrives. Deer use them only for cover and have to seek grazing outside their black shade. No drifts of herbs or bluebells grow under them in spring — they do not encourage biodiversity.

And they are quickly felled, so there is no time for them to grow gnarled and knobbled with age; or for insects and lichens to flourish into their fissures and crevices.

This is why we must plant and cherish our native trees. And I feel lucky to live among so many fine examples of them. Near my home, a 15th-century mill-house in Teesside, stretch the 5,000 acres of Hamsterley Forest.

It is criss-crossed by streams and its plantations of Scots Pines and ancient oaks are a rich natural habitat for roe deer, badger, red squirrels, reptiles and amphibians — and, of course, butterflies and moths.

Tranquil: Deer forage for food in the early morning sun as cooler temperatures bring on the autumn season

If you stand quietly and watch — as I often do in Hamsterley Forest — you may see a wood ant building its nest from fallen pine needles. And on a summer evening the air thrums with the song of the nightjar and woodcock.

Crossbills and siskins — an increasingly rare finch with a striking yellow rump — winter there and scurry round the forest floor looking for food, sheltered from the harsh winds by the trees. In the sky above the woods in which they make their homes, birds of prey such as goshawk, sparrow hawk and buzzards circle and swoop.

The woodland is a haven, too, for woodpeckers, treecreeper and summer migrants such as the pied flycatcher and wood warbler.

I love the richness of the autumn colours, which this year are set to last well into November. The experts at the National Arboretum say that some trees are turning much later than usual because of the mild weather, their green leaves contrasting beautifully with the reds, plums and oranges more usually associated with the season.

But more than this riot of colour — or even the new green growth of spring — I value the stillness of woodlands. There are desolate places where you can wander in silence.

The time I love best there is the winter when the trees are bare. It is the season for standing and quietly watching the creatures that live in the forest.

At dusk there may be pipistrelle bats. Although they hibernate, on warmer winter nights they flitter through the bare branches on their jerky, erratic twilight journey in search of prey. There are roe deer, too — you can often trace their tracks through the woodland paths — and families of badgers who break their long winter sleep to emerge on mild nights.

For all these reasons I cherish our woodlands; so, too, should you. For Britain is greener, richer — and infinitely more beautiful — because of them.

They are such a fundamental and glorious part of our landscape — a landscape, as Winston Churchill said, that’s worth dying for.