Abstract
The South East of England has an abundance of woodland, which offers a potential sustainable timber and fuel resource in parallel with being a much-loved part of rural life and rich ecological wildlife habitat. An ever-increasing quantity of mature broadleaved trees is available for harvest forms, with appropriate management and a sustainable yield potential, set against the backdrop of only 10% of UK timber demand currently supplied from UK-grown resource. There has been little systematic research into the factors that limit the sector and initiatives to address the challenge have not had a significant impact on the amount of woodland under management. Through semi-structured interviews across the wood supply chain, this research provides an integrated analysis of the factors limiting woodland management in the South East of England. The findings indicate the sector is complex, multifaceted, slow to respond to change and driven by a strong set of human, economic, environmental, and structural motivations away from use of local wood product. A novel insight from the research was that although there was a positive affinity for forestry and a strong culture of woodland management across the spectrum of stakeholders, there was little evidence of effective collaboration or sector integration. These factors have been summarised in a ‘rich picture’ providing a visual and intuitive way of engaging with stakeholders. This research fills a significant gap in understanding the dynamics of forestry in the South East of England and provides new underpinning evidence for policy makers to design interventions aimed at delivering better sustainable utilisation of woodland resources in parallel with offering support to rural communities and economies.
Highlights
Woodland is 13% of land cover in the UK, but only 10% in England [1]
Based on content analysis of the interview transcripts, a set of 38 factors were identified by participants as impacting on woodland management and under-utilisation of broadleaved wood product resource
Based on the analysis of the factors identified through the interviews and stakeholder socialisation of the rich picture visual summary, a set of conclusions can be drawn about the social, economic, and structural blockers limiting woodland management and the use of woodland wood product in the South East of England
Summary
Woodland is 13% of land cover in the UK, but only 10% in England [1]. Despite being just a third of the coverage of most other European countries and with slow progress towards the government’s target of 12% (in England) by 2060 [2], woodland is still a significant element of the landscape, in the South East of England.Woodlands have multiple potential uses including as a leisure environment, a material and energy resource, and provision of other ecosystem services such as flood protection, carbon sinks, and ‘green lungs’. The UK consumes around 500,000 m3 of hardwood for use in a range of products (biomass, sawn hardwood for boards, joinery products, etc.), yet only 10% is currently sourced from within the UK [4] This is not due to a lack of available resource or the sustainability of extracting it from the woodland. Within the South East of England, the situation is most acute, with 25% of the national total of ‘overdue’ wood biomass (trees past the age that they have been defined as available for felling, either by management plans or post the maximum Mean Annual Increment (MAI) point where growth rate slows down), yet the area has the least commensurate scale of wood product utilisation (sawmills, processing plants, and final consumer utilisation) of any region in the UK [6].
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