Tree Planting
(asked on 19th October 2021) - View Source
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate he has made of the number of trees that have been planted in England in 2021 to date.
Answered by
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Forestry Commission produces Official Statistics on England's woodland area annually for each financial year in thousands of hectares.
The latest available figures are for 2020-21, reporting 2.06 thousand hectares of new tree planting in England.
For all new planting of woodland since 2020-21, there is also a published estimate of the approximate number of trees this represents, available from the Forestry Commission Key Performance Indicators. These are available for the first quarter of 2021-22, reporting 0.47 thousand hectares (equivalent to 926,000 trees) of new tree planting in England. The planting season is over the winter so is only just starting for 2021-22.
Planting rates in 2020-21 were impacted by Covid-19. The England Trees Action Plan published in May 2021 stated our aim to at least treble tree planting rates in England by end of this Parliament.