Woodlands for Water (W4W)

Part of project: Land management

Woodlands for Water (W4W) was developed by Riverscapes Partnership, supported by Defra, with the aim of creating 3,150 hectares of trees in six river catchments from Devon to Cumbria by March 2025.

Tree cover in England currently stands at a tiny 10.% of the land in England (UK Government 2021), and yet trees have an essential role to play to tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis.

To help address this, Woodlands for Water (W4W) was developed by Riverscapes Partnership, supported by Defra, that aims to create 3,150 hectares of trees in six river catchments from Devon to Cumbria by March 2025.

Challenge

We are living through a biodiversity crisis, where 53% of our woodland wildlife species are in decline. Birds, bats, moths, butterflies, and more, all depend on woodlands, trees and hedges for food and shelter. By protecting the woodlands we have and working to create more woodlands and corridors linking habitats, we have a chance at saving the wealth of wildlife that depend on them.

To fight climate change, the UK needs to plant 1.5 million hectares of woodland by 2050 to meet our carbon-neutral targets. Through photosynthesis, trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester the carbon in the wood and soil.

This project will help combat both of these by working towards the government’s woodland creation targets to increase the UK canopy cover.

Approach

From our unique perspective within the Eden catchment, we understand the pressures faced by farmers in building sustainable farm businesses as well as a sustainable environment.

We offer advice, support and help them access funding, all whilst improving our river systems, the habitats that surround them and measures that allow natural flood management.

By providing the means to create woodland at little cost to the landowner, we are offering the chance for business diversification and habitat creation, buffering our river systems from the effects of agriculture and human activity.

Job done

34 ha (13 applications) of riparian woodland creation delivered through the England Woodland Creation Offer (Forestry Commission) grant.

Supporting landowners

The Woodlands for Water project funded the time of our Farming and Conservation Officer, Anna Holliday, to support landowners in their woodland creation endeavours.

If landowners wanted to create woodland larger than 1ha in total, Anna visited the site and used her knowledge and expertise to advise on woodland creation and design. If the England Woodland Creation Offer (EWCO), offered by the Forestry Commission was suitable, she drew up an application on a landowner’s behalf, all free of charge to the landowner.

Since April 2022, Anna has submitted seven applications to create 16 ha of native broadleaf woodland. This includes:

riparian woodland,
extending existing woodland,
wet woodland with leaky dams and
natural regeneration, where grazing and browsing is removed to let the area self-seed by neighbouring native mature trees.

To date, two of the seven applications have been approved and more are being submitted.