Trees and Woodland

Our publication 'A landscape view of trees and woodlands' provides a description of our woodlands that is more complete and is at a greater resolution than has ever been achieved before.

It gives guidelines to woodland owners, land managers and advisers that are intended to provide a broad basis for management decisions, rather than site-specific advice.

Trees and Woodland in the AONB; why have we produced this document?

The National Inventory of Woodland and Trees (2002), describes substantial tracts of woodland within the AONB as being Ancient Semi-Natural Woodland (ASNW); amounting to 7,201 hectares. However, we knew that this figure was wrong to some extent as a certain amount of ASNW had been wrongly identified as being so and some very old woodlands were excluded. But just how wrong was it? We needed a new way of determining the origins of woodland and ways of describing their function within the landscape so that landscape scale activity can link and bolster our nationally important aggregation of woodland. This demanded up to date, high quality data.

The nature of our woodlands

The majority of the woodland in the AONB is made up of small woodlands on farms, used typically for shooting and firewood. However, they also harbour internationally important assemblages of wildlife habitats and the species it supports including bats, beetles, butterflies, bryophytes and woodland birds, dormouse and otter. But woodlands are not just about wildlife, our woods also hold stores of wood fuel that can heat our homes in the future, some are comprised of valuable stands of timber and all our woodlands and trees form an integral part of the landscape.

New opportunities, changing attitudes

The AONB Partnership is working hard to promote wood fuel technology in an effort to restore or establish sympathetic management in these woodlands. At recent wood fuel events and at gatherings such as the Cranborne Chase Woodfair, many woodland owners have displayed a lack of awareness of landscape issues, but a readiness to respond positively to landscape scale and long term challenges.

The importance of advice

Through good management, trees and woodlands offer great opportunities to restore and enhance landscape character. If attitudes are to change within both the private and public sector, and new opportunities realised, then land owners, land managers and consultants must have the good advice, freely available, that they need to inform their key decisions.

Where can I get the document?

The project report can be downloaded below:

A landscape view of trees and woodlands (PDF, 7.3Mb)

The project methodology can be downloaded below:

Woodland Project Methodology (PDF, 2.16 MB)