The country-wide update of the Ancient Woodland Inventory has successfully progressed to the next stage within Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Northamptonshire. The update was started last year by the Local Environmental Records Centres hosted by the Wildlife Trust BCN and was passed on to two new members of the Monitoring and Research team, Katharine Flach and Andy Lear, earlier in the year to continue the process.

Ancient woodland is defined (in England) as a site which has been continuously wooded since 1600. It was once a dominant habitat but now only covers about 2.5% of the UK land area. The locations of these remaining fragments relate to settlement patterns, land use and ownership, and environmental constraints on farming and woodland clearance throughout history. The conditions created by centuries of undisturbed woodland growth and decay have created a rich and complex habitat. The species that have evolved to live in these environments are often slow to colonise, unable to survive in other conditions and are subsequently increasingly rare. It is therefore important to identify and protect the remaining ancient woodland for the future.

An area of woodland must have been ‘continuously wooded’ to classify as ancient. Ancient woodland habitat is almost impossible to replicate due to its slow development but continuously wooded sites maintain ancient woodland characteristics such as soils, ground flora, fungi, and woodland archaeology.  However, woodlands do not have to have been entirely tree-covered throughout the period. Open spaces, both temporary and permanent, are an important feature of woodland. These might occur as natural clearings and disturbance or due to tree felling and coppicing, which have been part of the use and management of woodland throughout much of history. Since it may have been partially cut many times in the past, an ancient woodland may not appear to have a high number of ancient or veteran trees. It can even be plantations of non-native species if this occurred without a period of non-wood cover. Such woodlands retain ancient woodland features and they can respond well to restoration management.

The Ancient Woodland Inventory is an existing register compiled in the 1980s to provide a record of ancient woodlands over two hectares. It was originally produced as reports and paper maps on a county basis, which have since been digitised to create a national dataset. It is a valuable resource for conservation and planning but has some inaccuracies from the initial mapping and the digitisation process and subsequent woodland loss, especially when used at the local scale. While areas of the inventory have been intermittently updated, the widening gap between the standards of the data and its use in determining the outcome of development or woodland management proposals can create significant problems for the authorities involved.

The aim of the update is to standardise and update the data held by the Ancient Woodland Inventory across the country. Since its creation, the availability of evidence, understanding of ancient woodland, and potential mapping detail have increased considerably. The update will include a revision of the current inventory to ensure that known ancient woodlands are still present, correctly mapped, and supported by additional historical evidence accessed. Previously undesignated ancient woodland will be added to the inventory. These may be sites or parts or larger woodlands which were missed due to mapping inaccuracies or availability of evidence, but are predominantly the addition of smaller woodlands down to 0.25 hectares. The Ancient Woodland Inventory update has also been expanded to include Wood-Pasture and Parkland. Wood-Pasture and Parkland is grazing land with scattered scrub and trees which are often traditionally managed through pollarding. Where ancient wood-pasture is identified, it should receive the same consideration as other forms of ancient woodland but the low tree density of this habitat means that they were not recorded as woodland on the current inventory.

The initial stages of the Ancient Woodland Inventory update process involved using modern aerials, MasterMap, and 1st Edition Ordnance Survey maps (Epoch 1, published 1843-1893) to identify areas shown as woodland in both the late 1800s and the present day. These are considered to be ‘Long-Established Woodland’. The results from this were compared with the existing Inventory to identify areas that may be additions to the inventory and to check the previously designated areas. This process has been undertaken by the Local Environmental Records Centres within Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Northamptonshire and was described in a previous blog post by Jackie Ullyett.

The current task is to track each area identified as Long-Established Woodland through time to establish its ‘ancient’ status. We have been locating, accessing, and georeferencing historical maps (OS drawings, tithe maps, estate maps etc.) to trace each area back in time towards the 1600s. We are also using more recent maps and photographs to ensure that the areas were not cleared and replanted at a later date. While some larger areas of woodland are easy to track through history, new additions to the inventory are likely to be smaller areas (since the original inventory only went down to two hectares and the update to 0.25 hectares) and those with a sparser historical record. The accumulation of evidence from multiple sources will therefore enable us to have the best knowledge of a woodland’s continued presence since 1600 and produce an accurate map of this rare habitat across the three counties, to support its better management, protection, and understanding.

We are currently preparing woodland surveys to add evidence for, or against, each area’s inclusion in the updated Ancient Woodland Inventory. Woodland often has physical indications of age, such as coppiced trees, banks and ditches to mark boundaries or signs of buildings and settlements in more recently established woodland. The species found within a woodland can also provide additional evidence. Certain species naturally occur near-uniquely in older woodland and colonise new areas slowly, therefore the presence of multiple of these indicator species suggests that an area of woodland is more likely to be ancient. We will be undertaking the surveys of the potential Ancient Woodland sites next spring and with hundreds of sites to investigate, we would like your help to gain information on as many as possible.

If you would be interested in undertaking some basic woodland surveys in your local area in Spring 2023, please get in contact ecologygroups@wildlifebcn.org

For more information:

The Wildlife Trust BCN's involvement in the project

Funding:

The Ancient Woodland Inventory (AWI) Update project is a countrywide, multi-partner funded project with an estimated cost of £2.5 million, over 3-5 years. The project has received funding from The Woodland Trust, DEFRA, Natural England and MHCLG (now DLUC).

The current update work being carried out in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire is funded in part by a donation made to the Woodland Trust by the Constance Travis Charitable Foundation.

View the current Ancient Woodland Inventory:

Natural England map

DEFRA map

Natural England Ancient Woodland Inventory