PART 2 - MOOR TREES

Part 1 of this article in Issue 180 of ‘The Moorlander’ described how local South Brent-based independent charity, Moor Trees, was established in 1999 to focus on recreating and restoring native broadleaved woodlands across Dartmoor and South Devon. (Please note that in Part 1 of this article, the location of Moor Trees was erroneously given as Ashburton rather than South Brent.)

Moor Trees grow their trees from locally collected seed in their two community tree nurseries at Dartington and at Broadley near Diptford, and plant them as new woodland on private and public land, supported by volunteers, community groups and local businesses. The focus is on growing up to 18 different species, all believed to be native to Devon, the general benchmark or datum point for defining ‘native to Devon’ being what is known to have been here immediately post-Ice Age, i.e., what colonised Devon and the South West as the last of the ice sheets retreated, but before the land bridge to Europe was lost.

Seed collection is therefore the starting point in the process, and in 2022, ‘The Moorlander’ was invited to join a seed collecting expedition in a native broadleaved woodland on South Dartmoor. Some 20 volunteers took part one Sunday in October last year, with everyone collecting specific seeds or berries from specific individual tree varieties.

The seed collecting exercise was being co-ordinated by Laura Cosio Lasic, Volunteer and Engagement Officer for Moor Trees. Tim Ferry, a volunteer and Trustee of Moor Trees, was also taking part.

Laura came to the UK from Madrid to study Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UAE) in Norwich, as she felt that the UK is a lot more progressive and sustainable in general than at home in Spain. Laura graduated in 2020 and started with Moor Trees in March 2021, initially as a Trainee and then as a Tree Nursery Assistant, before becoming the Volunteer and Engagement Officer in Autumn 2022.

Laura explained that as a team their primary aim for the day was to come to this particular woodland to gather seeds for growing over the Winter and Spring. They had received permission from the National Trust who owned this particular tract of woodland and also from the Forestry Commission, to collect the fruits, nuts and seeds. The idea was idea was to encourage volunteers to come along and join in to help with seed collection.

Individuals and small groups were all tasked with collecting specific varieties of seeds, so for example, Sammy Fraser, a volunteer, was assigned to collect just Holly berries, whilst Emily Williams from Cornwall, a recent graduate in languages from Exeter University, was tasked with a colleague to collect Guelder Rose berries.

Laura and Tim Ferry explained that the day’s seed collecting was targeting the fruits, nuts and seeds of Spindle, Guelder Rose, Acorn and Holly. Rowan, which fruits from late August through early October, had been collected already elsewhere, and whilst they were currently low on Hawthorn, being a moorland edge tree, they were hoping to collect some at another site. Moor Trees no longer collect Beech generally as it is not regarded as native to the South West.

In discussing Sycamore, both Laura and Tim pointed out that there is a lot of controversy in some circles as to what is considered truly native, and explained that they demarcate their time line with the arrival of the Romans, as there is no evidence for the deliberate introduction of tree species to Britain by early man prior to the Roman occupation.

Ash dieback has been and still is a problem with replanting, because traditionally the two main canopy trees in broadleaved woodland are Ash and Oak, and when Ash has been lost due to dieback, it has left an issue as to what else is a similarly tall long-lived canopy tree. As a viable alternative, Moor trees are currently substituting Small-leaved Lime and Hornbeam.

Once the various varieties of collected tree seed have germinated and been nurtured in the nurseries they need to be planted out, so it was on a grey and damp Sunday morning in January this year that ‘The Moorlander’ met with Moor Trees’ volunteers and Dartmoor Youth Rangers who were planting young trees on grazing land near Ashburton.

Brian Daniel, Operations Coordinator for Moor Trees, explained that the task was to plant some 500 trees with the help of volunteers over a couple of weeks.  It was a standard or normal mix of broadleaf varieties, grown in the Moor Trees nurseries and selected and prepared by Laura, consisting mainly of oak, with trees planted and spaced by discussion with the landowner and Adam Owen (Director of Moor trees), following initial site visits.

Trees are usually planted at a nominal 2m spacing, though that all depends on what exactly is being planted and where. Trees are selected at the nursery from random beds and mixed so as not to give rise to single variety groups. Volunteers are asked to spread out widely over the area to be planted, and ideally to collect and plant one tree at a time from the consignment using a sub-system so as to further randomise tree selection, and then as planting progresses to ‘backplant’ into the remaining open areas in order to fill in the gaps to avoid clustering.

In 2022, Moor trees prepared some 22,500 young trees or ‘whips’ to be planted out over the 2022/23 Winter. If planted to Forestry Commission standard, e.g., for woodland creation funded by a grant, the planting density is equivalent to 1,100 trees per hectare ( or 2.47 acres which is 100m x 100m, or about 25% larger than an average Premier League football pitch). However, Moor Trees also works with the Landowner, so if not bound by the terms of a funding grant there is more flexibility allowed in planting density and tree varieties.

On the particular tree planting day that ‘The Moorlander’ visited, according to Brian Daniel there were 20 volunteers from Moor Trees and in addition some 30 Junior and Youth Rangers from the National Park’s Junior Ranger Programme, part of which involves taking them to various outdoor activities associated with the National Park. The co-ordinators of the Junior Ranger Programme had asked if they could come and participate, so were given a separate area of the field for planting.

15 varieties of tree were being planted, including Alder, Birch, Hornbeam, Oak, Field Maple, Spindle, Hawthorn, Crab Apple, Wild Cherry, Holly, Willow, Rowan, Guelder Rose, Hazel, and Buckthorn.

The tree-planting volunteers were from a broad mix of backgrounds, yet all with similar motivations for volunteering. There were first-time volunteers such as Ryan and Charlie Kendrick from Ivybridge, motivated as they both like Dartmoor and enjoy walking on the Moor, and who thought that this particular Sunday they would do something outdoors and more wholesome, and long-term volunteers such as Kathy Hayman from Totnes, who has been tree-planting for 5 and a half years with her first planting season in 2018. Kathy estimated that in that time she has probably planted well over 1,000 trees. Whilst she hasn’t put her name on each tree as such or ever been back to see the specific fruits of her labours, she does say that what is nice to see is “when suddenly after a couple of hours of planting, the landscape looks transformed”.

A couple of the older Youth Rangers, Douglas Radcliffe from Tavistock and Matt Jacob-Hocking from Plymouth, were both studying Land & Wildlife Management (Level 2) at Bicton Agricultural College, and participating in the tree planting under the auspices of the National Park’s Youth Ranger Programme. Douglas had been working with Moor Trees since Spring 2022 and was hoping to go on to do something like a Forestry degree, whilst Matt was planning on getting similar work locally on leaving college, with ambitions to become a Dartmoor Ranger.

The dedication of many of these volunteers is perhaps best exemplified by Jon Covey, a long-term volunteer and former Treasurer and Trustee of Moor Trees who was recently awarded the British Empire Medal in the King’s Birthday Honours for services to the environment. Despite a full-time job as a painter and decorator, for a number of years Jon devoted over 1,000 hours a year to Moor Trees as an unpaid volunteer, using his home as a seed-germination station and teaching and supervising volunteers in all the processes needed to produce healthy trees to create new Dartmoor woodlands.

Adam Owen is the Director of Moor Trees, overseen by a Board of eight Trustees, all of whom are very active within the charity, along with four other members of staff, three of whom are full-time and one is part-time. Funding comes from various grants, restrictive and unrestrictive; through tree dedications, when people want to mitigate for carbon use through tree planting; corporate sponsorship; and the sale of trees and planting of trees. Landowners also pay for the services of Moor Trees as a consultancy.

In terms of carbon mitigation, Adam explains that for a number of years Moor Trees have worked with the Forestry Commission on Whole Carbon Analysis of various species of trees throughout their life cycles, looking at their different growth rates in order to obtain rates of Carbon Absorption. This effectively enables them to estimate the number of trees of a particular variety that need to be planted to mitigate for one ton of carbon dioxide equivalent over their average lifetime.

 So, Moor Trees are able to say to people that if they wish to sponsor Moor Trees, they can have a certain number of trees planted on their behalf, which over the lifetime of those trees, would mitigate for so many tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. As Adam points out, not a fully verified scheme as such but a way that people can support a local charity and have a direct association with Carbon Mitigation. Additionally, such a scheme raises awareness of the current climate crisis and how nature can help. However, as Adam also points out, it is not an exact science - whilst an average Rowan tree may live for around maybe 65 years, an oak typically lives for 100 years or more, yet from a forest of 1,000 trees not all will live to their average life expectancy, so planting of trees is only a partial solution to Carbon Mitigation.

Adam’s background is impressive, making him extremely knowledgeable about tree husbandry and the environment from a practical as well as a theoretical and academic perspective. Starting with his first degree in Social Sciences and a position in the Forestry Commission as a Recreation Ranger based in Surrey engaging with the community, he moved on and studied for an M.Sc in Environmental Forestry, including case studies in Africa and the Caribbean. This led to a position with Guildford Borough Council as a Tree Officer, where he rose to be the Parks and Countryside Officer, managing some 5,000 council properties, all with trees needing to be monitored as well as looking after some 30 sites encompassing chalk downland, heathland, coniferous woodland and broadleaf woodland, all with a diverse range of habitats.

Adam says that a key objective of Moor Trees is to see a wilder Dartmoor, with more trees back in the landscape. He feels that there has to be a balance between land used for trees and land used for food production but points out that the UK is the largest timber importer globally next to China, and that we do not have a sustainable forestry industry. He also points out that we import over 50% of our food requirements - in essence there are simply too many people on our tiny island for the resources that we require, to which there is no simple solution in the foreseeable future; we will have to continue to import timber and food, but for Moor Trees it is about being reasonable where we plant trees.

There are huge swathes of Dartmoor that are not sustainable for cropping, both High Moor and valleys, and there are significant areas of peat cover that are totally unsuitable for tree planting. However, there are many steep sided cleaves and valleys around the margins where there is a lot of clitter that will never have crops and is not easily grazed, that could very easily regenerate naturally if grazing pressure, by deer as well as by domestic livestock, is reduced.

Increasing tree cover does not mean that it is no longer a grazed landscape; it can still be a grazed landscape with trees. Adam does not envisage dense woodland with a tree every square meter but a landscape with short scrub, some of it going up to high forest, with open areas, grazed areas, and accessible to people as well.

It is a challenge finding those spaces and places and working with the people who are managing the land and trying to get some tree establishment, and if one can get lots of small patches of trees growing then over time infill will happen, but it is also about ensuring that those landscapes can still be accessed and used by the farming community or equally as well for tourism which is just as important to the local economy as farming.

Adam sums up by saying that, as a charity, the biggest challenges Moor Trees faces are “funding, volunteers, and landowners who want trees planted on their land. Anyone who wants to donate to us, or leave a legacy, or be a corporate sponsor, that is very helpful. If there are any landowners who are really interested in either tree planting or assisted natural regeneration, Moor Trees are happy to work with them”.

The following weblinks can provide more information about Moor Trees and associated organisations:

Moor Trees -

https://moortrees.org/

The Tree Council -

https://treecouncil.org.uk/

The Forestry Commission -

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/forestry-commission

Green Recovery Challenge Fund –

https://www.ukpact.co.uk/green-recovery-challenge-fund