Project to protect gnarled oak trees in Dales

For the past two years, Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority volunteers and community groups have been roaming the 680sq miles of the area listing the old trees in one of three categories – ancient, veteran or notable – to help to update existing records.

More than 800 ancient trees have already been recorded in an attempt to identify the condition and location of them for conservationists, and to provide protection from illegal felling.

Among the trees documented is the ancient Laund Oak on the Bolton Abbey Estate, which is believed to be over 800 years old.

Now landowners and visitors are now being asked to join in the survey to ensure that none are missed out.

Phill Hibbs, the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s trees and woodland officer, said: “So far, 833 have been logged and more are being identified or recorded on a regular basis. The majority (51 per cent) are oak trees, with ash, alder and beech making up around 15 per cent each.

“Some of them are very old indeed – possibly over 800 years – and look just like the Ents in Lord of the Rings – gnarled and marked by time and the environment.

“They all play a vital role in the ecology of the national park and in helping to maintain the balance of nature by providing shelter and food for all sorts of native wildlife as well as a refuge for rare niche fungi and plants.”

The information gathered by the Dales volunteers and other organisations such as the Swaledale and Arkengarthdale Archaeological Group, has been uploaded to a national database set up under the Woodland Trust’s Ancient Tree Hunt project, which aims to record all the UK’s ancient, veteran and notable trees.

The project is a partnership between the Woodland Trust, the Ancient Tree Forum and the Tree Register of the British Isles.

Andrew Colley, the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority’s member champion for the natural environment, said: “The UK has an estimated 80 per cent of all northern Europe’s ancient trees.

“However, many of them are under threat from illegal felling, inappropriate management and development.

“For these reasons it’s important that we work alongside the Woodland Trust’s Ancient Tree Hunt to ensure the protection of these wonderful habitats and markers in time.

“Without the help of the Dales volunteers and local organisations, this would be an almost impossible task so we would like to say a big thank you to them – and appeal to landowners and visitors to help as well.

“If a tree has that wow factor then it’s probably special – it could have local historical or cultural significance or be notable because it is rare or magnificent in stature.

“So when people are out and about within the national park and you spot what they consider to be an interesting old tree that has some unusual features, we are urging them to take a note of its location, or perhaps a photo and get in touch, so that we can get it surveyed and added on to the data set.”

Woodlands cover just 4.45 per cent of the Dales, compared to an average in Great Britain of 13 per cent and in England of 9.9 per cent.

The Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority and the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust are aiming to plant 200 acres of new trees a year in an effort to tackle the problem.

Last year, the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust, which is best known for its work planting native broadleaved trees, announced that it had made a key step forward in nearby Nidderdale by planting 6,750 trees including hawthorn, ash and downy birch at Harrison’s Wood, near Pateley Bridge, linking in to an existing area of woodland it planted in 2008.

In March last year, the trust planted its millionth tree which was hailed by experts as a milestone in efforts to restore native broadleaf woodlands in the Yorkshire Dales.