Green Living

GreenLiving

Rare trees kept in the dark for major north Wales planting project

A huge boost to our nation’s tree species is under way as part of a major planting programme being carried out by the North Wales Wildlife Trust

L-R: Jonathan Hulson, Sarah Ellis and Lisa James

Amini forest has been stored in suspended animation in north Wales, including one of the rarest and most valuable trees in Europe. More than 16,000 small saplings are housed in a steel storage unit supplied by Denbigh’s Container Sales Centre (CSC), waiting to be planted at North Wales Wildlife Trust’s Aberduna Nature Reserve.

The former shipping container is the ideal place for the saplings. “It’s perfect because it doesn’t let any light in at all and that way we can keep the small trees in a state of suspended animation for a few months,” says Jonathan Hulson, a project manager at Woodlands For Water. “Once the trees come out, they soon come back to life.”

Super species

Among the varieties are native species such as sessile oak, rowan, hazel, field maple, willow, silver birch and Scots pine. There are some

“Hopefully in a couple of less common trees too, including the wild service tree, which was common before farming saw much of the land cleared and is now highly valued in Germany, where hundred years veneer-grade wild service timber can fetch prices of over there will be €4,000 per cubic metre. “The specimen we’ve got came lots of wild service trees in from a woodland in the Vale of Clwyd, but hopefully in a couple of hundred years there will be lots of them in our landscape,” says Jonathan. “We are planting them our landscape” for their value in slowing the rate at which water drains from the land, an important aid in preventing flooding.” The trust has four nurseries growing young trees around Aberduna Quarry, and many of the saplings are then being planted on farmland, new housing developments and industrial estates across the area. They are grown to between 90 and 120cm high, which is just tall enough to prevent the top leaves being grazed by sheep.

Going native

“The container is proving ideal for us because we have been able to keep the trees dormant for planting out in the field or potted up in our nursery,” says Sarah Ellis, a Woodlands For Water project officer. “Our remaining ancient woodlands in north-east Wales are generally poor in terms of species diversity because native trees such as sessile oak were mostly cut down to be used as pit props and fuel in the mining industry.”

Recycling b m challenges system

The recent rise in the amount of household recycling has prompted fears that facilities won’t be able to cope

Astudy of 2,000 adults found that one-third have seen a boom in their recycling since the beginning of the pandemic, with almost two-thirds (64 per cent) putting this down to being home more. Almost half (48 per cent) blamed packaging from online deliveries for their overflowing bins, with many saying they have run out of space in their bins as a result.

Top items people are recycling more of include hand soap containers (30 per cent) and toilet rolls (25 per cent), while 35 per cent say they’re embarrassed about the amount of waste they produce. But more than one in 10 (12 per cent) admitted to putting recycling into the rubbish bin, meaning it is likely to end up in landfill or incineration.

According to recycling and packaging company DS Smith, which commissioned the research, the UK’s recycling infrastructure isn’t equipped to deal with the increased volume

of home recycling. To highlight the problem, the packaging brand created a larger-thanlife recycling bin, standing “More than one in 10 people at just under 7ft tall, to demonstrate the admitted to scale of the changes that are needed. simply putting “Even before the pandemic, we were making recycling into the switch to online shopping and working their rubbish bin” from home more, but Covid-19 restrictions revolutionised these trends,” says Rogier Gerritsen, managing director of DS Smith. “With many of these changes looking set to stay, including our new recycling habits, we need to ensure that our collections infrastructure enables us to recycle as much material as possible from our domestic streams. “We applaud the government for its ambitious recycling targets, but at the moment we’re not on track. Based on current recycling trends our data suggests that we’ll only meet the 65 per cent recycling target for municipal waste in 2048, over 10 years too late.”

You’re gonna need a bigger bin shed…