Ancient Woodland

Extract

About 3% of the UK is made up of ancient woodland, still a large area but, many of the sites are tiny and scattered across the country.

It is their size and distribution that makes them particularly vulnerable to being chipped away by house building, road widening and service provision.

The South East is particularly at risk given the pressure to develop and accommodate an ever growing population. (Full item here)

Extract

Using the Inventories of ancient, long-established and semi-natural woodland for Scotland , the percentage of Scotland’s ancient woodland afforded Site of Special Scientific Interest protection is 48%.

From the SNH web pages:

In Scotland, Ancient Woodland is defined as land that is currently wooded and has been continually wooded, at least since 1750 which is when the first maps to cover the whole country were produced . Ancient woodland is thus directly descended from the original woodland that developed after the retreat of the ice sheets in Britain 10,000 years ago. The wildlife communities, soils and structure of ancient woodlands have had the longest time to develop, and are therefore generally (but not invariably) richer than that of more recent woods - so we can use 'ancientness' as an indicator of woods which are likely to be of high value in relation to other aspects of the nature and landscapes. More here