Protecting the health of our forests and trees from pests and disease is vital. This is because as they provide around £5bn per year of societal and environmental value through non-market public goods such as carbon sequestration, air pollution absorption, biodiversity, recreation landscape value, noise, flood and heat reduction and a whole range of other benefits that cannot easily be monetised, as well as commercial value. Delivering and enhancing the public goods delivered by healthy trees is a top priority for the Forestry Commission and Defra as demonstrated in the 25 Year Environmental Plan and the Tree Health Resilience Strategy.
The Forestry Commission (FC) are the Government’s forestry experts delivering the protection, improvement and expansion of England’s trees, woods, and forests. It achieves this through regulation, incentives, and advice. The Forestry Commission is providing end-to-end delivery of the pilot due to their extensive experience of delivering grant schemes, expertise in tree health and established networks and relationships with key stakeholders.
The objective of the three-year Tree Health Pilot is testing and refining new elements of a future tree health scheme that will launch in late 2024, building on the existing Countryside Stewardship Woodland Tree Health grants. The aim of the future scheme is to support land managers in building the resilience of England’s trees, woods and forests, whilst enhancing the benefits trees provide, by mitigating and minimising the impact of pests and diseases and improving the capacity of our trees to adapt to changing pressures.