We have now started on the final phase of the Ancient Woodland Inventories for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire.
Over the spring and summer nearly 500 woods across the three counties were surveyed by volunteers and staff. Thank you to all those who got involved.
We were able to gather information from across the three counties and from a far higher number of sites than we could possibly have visited ourselves! The survey responses and photographs enabled us to age a large number of woodlands which have limited documentary evidence and add the categories of ASNW (Ancient Semi-Natural Woodland) and PAWS (Plantation on Woodland Site).
The updates for the three counties have found a large number of smaller woods – many between 0.25 and 2 ha in size – which were omitted from the original inventory. It has also allowed current ancient woodland boundaries to be refined using maps and information not available to the compilers of the original inventory.
In the case of Northamptonshire this has resulted in adding at least 350 ha of ancient woodland with the possibility that this might increase to 800 ha once all potential sites have been reviewed.
The case for Bedfordshire is different. Although many small woodlands will be added to the inventory few existing larger woodlands have been removed because further information has revealed they are secondary. A number of the latter were on the Greensand ridge where former heathland was planted with trees sometime in the 17th and 18th centuries – something the original compilers of the inventory were unaware of. A smaller area of woodland has been lost to development – including the conversion of a large part of Charle Wood into a golf course around the year 2000.
This has reduced the amount of ancient woodland by 147 ha, but if all the potential new woodland is added there could be a small 41 ha increase in total area. Realistically however, the extent of Bedfordshire ancient woodland is likely to remain about the same.
For Cambridgeshire the total amount also looks to increase slightly. It currently stands at a net increase of just over 100ha of Ancient Woodland and a possible further increase of up to 450ha of sites which require further investigation.
Some of the larger changes are actually inventory corrections - areas which were previously removed from the inventory due to woodland clearance but were replanted or allowed to regrow, or areas which were included but historical records now show evidence of use for agriculture within the past 400 years. However, the update has mostly brought about small alterations to known ancient woodland boundaries using old map boundaries and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) to map according to external banks and ditches.
The Inventories are almost in their final form but there still a number of woods which require further confirmatory surveys or historical evidence.
To complete this work The Woodland Trust and Natural England have agreed to fund a project extension through to next June.
In addition, we will also be updating the Ancient Woodland Inventory for Leicestershire and Rutland as Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust did not have the resources to take this on. Katharine Flach will be carrying on with Cambridgeshire and finalising the Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire Inventories whilst Andy Lear will be working on Leicestershire and Rutland.