Pretty Green? — WildArt Photographer of the Year

How can we reduce our carbon footprint, how can we mitigate the latest planning permission or large-scale development, how can we show that we are committed to the environment? I know, we’ll plant some trees.

Tree planting in the name of wildlife and the environment has become an ever-increasing feature in the UK in recent years. The edges of industrial estates, new housing estates, council owned land, government owned land, NGO owned land - it is happening everywhere having become the go-to option for those wanting to show they are being green. But is it the best option for wildlife and the environment? Have we become blind to other, more natural, options? Are we not seeing the wood for the trees?

Trees evolved millions of years before our species dominated the planet. Honed by evolution, they have always been able to propagate themselves effectively and efficiently, so why do we now think we can do it better? If we want trees to grow, perhaps the best way, the most efficient way, the most economical way, and above all the greenest way, is to let them get on with it themselves. But we don’t like doing that, we need to be seen to be doing something, and we need to be in control. Perhaps it stops us from feeling insignificant if we believe that nature needs us for it to function properly?

Nature can, and always does, look after itself without our help. We need nature, but nature doesn’t need us. So, here’s a radical thought. We move away from thinking we need to control nature to create nature, we stop being afraid of natural processes, and stop thinking that we need to plant trees in order to have trees.

*Above: Is it always necessary to adopt a tree planting scheme over leaving an area to the processes of natural succession? ©Rob Read*

Many Councils own areas of land that are managed as open space, regularly mown with machines to keep the grass low and to ensure that the area looks ‘neat and tidy’. These areas have tremendous potential for wildlife and many local authorities are waking up to this. They are starting to look at these amenity spaces, realising they could do something green with them, and how they can manage these areas to fulfill some of that potential. But they also seem to think that the only way they can do so is by planting trees.

But nature could do it for them, if only they stopped to realise that it is just the blades of the mowers that are preventing trees from ever getting established as part of the natural process of succession. If these areas were removed from the mowing regime, nature would be allowed to bloom, literally. Grasses would get long and straggly, they (and numerous other plants) would start to flower, bramble would begin to appear, and it wouldn’t be long before the first trees also popped up. Within a couple of years, dense scrub would form in gloriously random patches, young tree saplings from a diverse range of local species would spring up everywhere. These trees will have germinated in the soils in which they will carry on growing, helped by the partnerships they will have formed with the hidden world of fungi, partnerships that are so vital to the young trees’ healthy development. In short, the entirely natural process of succession will be creating a fantastic wildlife space in which the wished-for trees will ultimately thrive.

But instead of allowing this natural process to happen, councils and land managers up and down the country continue to believe that they can do it better than nature. The grass areas are mown short once more, often a specific herbicide is used to kill off the grasses around the spot where outsourced trees, pulled up from a distant nursery some days before, are thrust into the soils in regimented patterns, their inevitably damaged roots lacking the vital mycorrhizal links they need to thrive. A wooden stake, ironically made out of a felled tree, is hammered into the ground next to them to ensure that the tree can only grow in the proscribed manner of uprightness that we feel is so important. And then, to add insult to injury, it is encased in plastic for its own protection.

Why is this done when nature would do it so much better and for free? An inherent inability to accept that nature can look after itself without us interfering is perhaps the largest hurdle to overcome. I recently listened to a public discussion between a local community group and a councillor, both parties shared a common goal in wanting to improve the biodiversity of their local area. The community group were advocating a process of natural succession and the council representative was firmly entrenched in the mass tree planting method, a method that the council had already unilaterally adopted, having planted 25,000 outsourced trees in carefully managed areas. At one stage in the discussion, the councillor sought to justify their position by stating that they were ‘simply giving nature a helping hand’. But perhaps nature simply needs us to give it a free hand to see it thrive.

Above: What is the environmental cost to nursery-grown saplings, plastic tubes and the labour required to plant them? ©Rob Read

Then there is public perception. In the discussion mentioned above, the councillor time and again referred to members of the public seeing natural succession happening and complaining about ‘untidiness’, assuming the council had stopped managing areas as part of a cost-cutting exercise. It was, to the complainant’s mind, an example of the council letting it all ‘go to ruin’. I see this misunderstanding as an opportunity to explain what it is really happening, why it is being done, and the beneficial outcomes it will have. Misperception is a symptom of the classic illness of poor communication.

When a council or other large landowner wishes to do the right thing for biodiversity, they normally seek advice from conservation organisations - it is the sensible thing to do after all. Tree planting has suddenly become big business and a big revenue earner, including for NGOs that are perceived as ‘green’ organisations. Services are provided to councils and landowners that are considering large-scale planting schemes, including site visits and consultations; trees are provided in large numbers and planting carried out by contractors. This costs money for one group and makes money for another.

As well as the large-scale tree planting schemes, perhaps these organisations should also be advocating natural processes, but natural processes don’t make money. Should we blame these councils and landowners when all they are doing is following the advice of organisations that practice conservation?

And there is the environmental cost to large scale tree planting schemes. Citing my example, what was the carbon cost of using 25,000 outsourced trees I wonder, each one replete with its wooden stake, cable ties and plastic tube? It would be interesting to calculate the environmental costs of using nursery grown trees in large scale planting schemes; my bet is that this method of producing trees isn’t as green as we’d like to think. Tree nurseries, just like any plant nursery, are specially prepared and intensively managed sites that enable the growers to grow their produce in a way that makes it easy and cheap to lift the trees from their growing medium and transport them. This takes infrastructure, and that means environmental cost.

Young trees need lots of water, especially if you don’t want them developing deep root systems which would make lifting them and transporting them extremely difficult. The amount of water used in tree nurseries has an environmental cost. For the trees to grow into straight ‘whips’ they will need to be kept ‘weed’ free and, as they are being grown as a monoculture in an artificial situation, they will also be prone to ‘pests’.

Then there is the carbon cost of delivering them to the planting site, getting the contractors to the site to plant them, and the carbon cost of producing the wooden stakes and the plastic tubes. We are constantly reminded that tree planting is efficient carbon offset, yet these outsourced trees are already starting off in carbon ‘negative equity’. Meanwhile, the germinating Hawthorn originally planted by a Blackbird that is popping up in the unmown grass, is instantly in carbon credit.

I am not naïve enough to think that everybody will buy into improving biodiversity using natural processes, nor is it a suitable option in every situation, but I believe that most people, once properly informed, will support it. You only need to consider the viewing figures of programs such as Springwatch to realise there is a large groundswell of support for green issues, particularly among the younger generation, a generation that will be inheriting the schemes councils are implementing now.

Tree planting has seemingly become the universal panacea to all our biodiversity ills, it is the go-to option for landowners everywhere who are seeking ways of improving wildlife habitats and reducing carbon footprints. But there is a far more effective and efficient way for us to grow trees, and that is to let nature grow them for us. Public landowners like councils need to be brave and realise that natural processes are just that, they are the natural thing to do.

Ian Parsons. August 2021.