Helping hand for region's woodlands

There's also a need to replant areas of forest which have been harvested for commercial timber.

The replanting is happening now, after a five year gap, because the "brash" or tree debris left by a big storm has to be allowed to die down before new saplings can be put in. This is partly because the fallen wood can make it difficult to prepare the ground for replanting.

Forest managers will be keeping a careful eye on the current weather conditions, as there is a four-month window of opportunity when planting can be carried out. The reason is that during the winter the roots of the saplings are fairly dormant and need to be planted before the warmer weather arrives. The target for planting is 400,000 this season, with more to follow next year.

Surprisingly, perhaps, this is still done by hand, it is generally felt that machines lack the judgement to put the saplings in exactly the right spot. According to Jon Bates, the district forester for operations, the terrain conditions mean that the machines cannot easily travel over the site.

The commission reckons that a good experienced forestry worker can plant up to 1,000 trees a day. It is carried out by a mixture of staff and contractors who are brought in to do this job.

The saplings are all grown at the commission's nursery in Wykeham Forest, near Scarborough. Many of those going in this year will be

Sitka Spruce, which will be harvested in the next 30 to 40 years.

It's a tree which has attracted some criticism in the past because of the monotony it can bring to the landscape, but Mr Bates says there are good practical reasons for planting it.

"It suits the site conditions. A lot of these sites are in cold exposed areas, forests like Langdale where very few trees will actually grow. Sitka Spruce is well suited to those wet upland moorland conditions."

Most of the commercial planting this season is being concentrated at sites in and around the North York Moors such as Langdale, near Pickering, Ingleby Greenhow, near Stokesley, Gilling, near Helmsley, Sneaton, near Whitby and Harwood Dale, north of Scarborough.

As well as the commercial Sitka Spruce, other woods are being planted with native broadleaved trees. These sites include woods like Oldstead, near Thirsk, and Pry Rigg, near Helmsley, about 50 acres (about 20 hectares) in all which will be allowed to return to ancient woodland with trees such as Ash, Oak and Rowan.

Although the trees are planted by hand, their position in the forest is mapped out to the finest detail using the latest technology a GIS (Geographic Information System) programme, which allows forest managers to avoid planting them anywhere that they might disturb archaeological or conservation sites.

Alan Eves, forest management director for the North York Moors, says this is about more than just producing as much timber as possible, and attitudes are changing.

"Many local woods were planted after the two world wars and in the 1960s when timber production was a priority," he says.

"It was a very different world back then with war-time timber shortages still fresh in the memory in a nation with very low tree cover.

"But these days we take a much broader approach, with timber production being balanced with wildlife, recreation and landscape objectives.

"The buzz word is multi-purpose forestry, but I think the US Forest Service puts it rather better preferring the term 'land of many uses'."