Kate Graham visits an ambitious reforestation and peat restoration project high in the Yorkshire Dales
23rd September 2024
“Five hundred years ago these slopes were covered in trees, it was a dark and dangerous forest spreading as far as the eye could see.”
Alistair’s words fire my imagination: 1600 doesn’t seem that long ago. The beautiful twelfth-century church at Hubberholme, itself built on the site of a forest chapel, would have been old by that time. Today the trees are largely gone, replaced by grass and sheep. Natural woodland cover in the Dales stands at 4.3% of the total land area, with broadleaved woodland at a mere 2% and ancient woodlands at only 0.8% – and still declining, due to land-use change and the ongoing ravages of ash dieback. We may think the Dales have always been green, grassy and covered in sheep, but this is in fact a relatively recent landscape which has replaced woodlands that stood for centuries.
Alistair Nash, Regional Estate Manager with the Woodland Trust, is responsible for a groundbreaking rewilding and nature restoration project at Snaizeholme, near Hawes in North Yorkshire. Today, there are few native trees to be seen: further down the valley, a carpet of young sitka spruce climbs the slopes in serried rows, with older plantations forming dark rectangles above it. The steep, glaciated valley sides are otherwise bare and boggy, stretching up 1,000 feet to the skyline, itself traversed by the Roman roads that now form the Pennine Way and Pennine Bridleway. It feels bare and harsh, unloved and unforgiving.
As we join Alistair, Site Manager Alec Pue and Communications and Engagement Officer (North) Paul Moseley, looking up this immense valley, we realise we’re only seeing a small proportion of the project site.* This is an immense project, not just in terms of area covered – nearly 1,400 acres – but also in its vision and in the scale of the problems it’s tackling. It has taken two years to work out how to address the depletion of the soils, the declining peat, the high levels of erosion and run-off, and the work has included surveys of ground-nesting birds, archaeological remains and peat depths. These determine where trees can be safely planted: Alistair shows us how this zone forms a horseshoe around the valley, with a densely planted core, then looser planting easing out into the grasslands, leaving the valley bottoms and upper slopes undisturbed.
Seeing the wood for the trees
Tree-planting is at the core of the project, with 400,000 trees planted so far, all by hand. These are mixed deciduous trees, including sub-montane species such as dwarf birch, willow and rowan, that would have formed part of the ancient forests. At first, it isn’t obvious where these new trees are. Then I notice that they’re all around us: each rising a foot or two above the ground, their new leaves catching the sunlight, many of them bushy and healthy-looking. But there are no plastic guards, no protection from the rabbits, hares, voles and deer that can make short work of young trees like these. No herbicides are being used on site, although there are 20 kilometres of fencing, mostly to keep out neighbouring stock, and there’s also a network of trail cameras. As Alistair explains, “We want to see which trees survive, which ones nature will accept, and which get eaten or die for some other reason. Some will die, and that’s natural.”
The focus is more on the habitats which are being created than on counting the precise number of trees. The aim is to plant 300 hectares of woodland – close to half the site will have some degree of tree cover. I wonder how many deer there are. The team expect about half their new trees to grow, which will mean there are natural gaps in the eventual forest cover. They should avoid the issue that many projects face, 10 years in, of finding that their trees have grown too well, and need to be coppiced or thinned in some way. This nature-based approach is different and an essential element of the project, creating the most naturalistic woodland effect possible.
Curlews and cameras
As we walk towards the valley bottom and the bothy the project is renovating, a curlew rises angrily from its nest. Alastair chuckles: “She’ll circle round in the opposite direction now to make us think her nest is over there.” Sure enough a few minutes later we see her scuttling down behind the bothy, marking out a wide circle before returning to her nest, her arrival recorded by one of the many nest-cams on the site.
Trail cameras, nest cameras and drones all contribute to the intensive observations and measurements that form another foundation of this project. Leeds and York Universities are involved in 20-year research contracts to measure a huge range of metrics, from soil structure and biodiversity to water quality and flow rates, following how each aspect of the environment responds to the interventions. The project monitors the nests of its precious curlews and lapwings, to observe what affects their breeding success. Sheep have been removed to increase the biodiversity of the grasslands – and in fact to remove a potential predator, as a video of a sheep pushing a curlew off its nest and eating its eggs shows. For now, the project team are experimenting with a neighbouring farmer’s small herd of Hereford cattle grazing in the valley bottom. It’s good to note that the invertebrates on site won’t come to any harm, as it’s Woodland Trust policy that no stock are allowed on the land while any worming medication is still in their system.
Peat restoration will form a significant part of the project. The slopes here are boggy, but there are few areas of deep peat, largely due to contour draining in the 1970s. The drainage increased run-off, with records showing much higher flow peaks for Snaizeholme Beck. The Management Plan notes that the whole project is about natural flood management, as this area feeds three river catchments: the Ouse, the Ribble and the Wharfe. Everything that’s done to slow down the flows along the 42 kilometres of streams within the project area will reduce the risk of flooding lower down, directly benefiting many people.
Free to think big
This is a remote area, and a haven for rare species such as the native, white-clawed crayfish and the red squirrels of Mirk Pot woods, which both require constant protection from their invasive American cousins. There’s also no mobile phone signal, so the team have had to plan for safety and access. They’re thinking big: building two new bridges large enough for lorries and emergency vehicles and converting an existing barn into a bothy with power and water, providing much-needed shelter for the research teams and support in the event of an accident. It would take time to get help, and another hour for an air ambulance to arrive, so this forethought might save someone’s life.
Improved tracks allow vehicles to move around without churning up the soil, and the bridges allow the now-pristine beck to be crossed without the risk of it getting polluted with mud, diesel or engine oil. Meanwhile, filling vertical ruts left by tractors climbing the boggy slopes has reduced run-off and erosion. Reducing water erosion is critical: there’s a lot of rain here: we were lucky to enjoy sunshine and a gentle breeze for our visit, but horizontal rain (or snow!) is more normal. Farming in this part of the world is tough; with sheep often needing supplemental feeding throughout the year, many farmers welcome alternative ways of living with the land. Alistair is keen to make clear there’s still a place for farmers in this landscape, it’s just that the economic model for farming needs to change.
The team’s aim is to future-proof this project, which means imagining what might be needed over the next 25 years as the trees grow, the birds return and the peat recovers. I felt inspired by this freedom to think and plan, by the scale and wisdom of the process and its funding, and by the commitment to learning and to apply this learning. I was inspired by the changes that are already happening – not just by the possibility of change that this group and their supporters are bringing about, but by a sense of a landscape now loved, which is starting to recover from the damage of the last 500 years, and building the foundations for a new wild forest and a resilient landscape in which nature – including humans – can thrive again.
Fact file
Snaizeholme in numbers:
- 563.6 hectares (1,387 acres)
- 400,000 trees (and counting!)
- 200 acres of planting
- 20 miles of fencing
Owned by the Woodland Trust, Snaizeholme is a unique and complex habitat restoration and nature recovery project 20 miles north of Settle, close to the Ribblehead Viaduct in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. It’s one of largest woodland creation sites in England.
Tree planting has been done entirely by hand by team of contractors by creating a hand scrape to plant into to form a weed free surround for the first year. They have used a mix of bare root and cell grown trees (in hindsight Alec felt that cell grown would probably have been better as it has a longer season for planting, plants are usually stronger although often a bit small so the ideal would be to grow them on for a second year before planting).
Tree species mix: 15% alder, 15% aspen, 15% Scots pine. In addition, there are two types of willow, blackthorn and hawthorn, downy birch and silver birch, rowan and some oak – but not much oak, and in targeted areas only: the site is adjacent to a red squirrel population, so the oak is being restricted to avoid attracting grey squirrels. No hazel is being planted at the moment, for the same reason.
Videos:
You can find out more and support the project at www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/support-us/give/appeals/snaizeholme/
* Debbie and Jeff Davitt and Kate Graham were hosted in May 2024 by Alistair Nash (Regional Estate Manager) Alec Pue (Project Manager) and Paul Moseley (Communications & Engagement Manager (North)). Big thanks to all the team for having us.
Image credit for thumbnail on feature stories page: Alastair Nash