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Old January 13th, 2018 #1
Scaramantula
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Default Britain's Next Megaproject: A Coast-to-Coast Forest

Northern England is set to get a whole lot greener. On Sunday, the U.K. government unveiled plans for a vast new forest spanning the country from coast to coast. Shadowing the path of the east-west M62 Highway, the new forest will create a broad green rib across England from Liverpool to the east coast city of Hull.

If fully realized along the lines announced this week, the forest will ultimately contain 50 million new trees, stretched in a dense 62,000-acre patchwork along a 120-mile strip. Not only will the forest repopulate one of the least wooded parts of the country with local, mainly broadleaf tree species, it will also provide a band of newly greened landscape to escape to from the many big cities located nearby.

The goal of a thick green ribbon is still a long way off, of course. So far, the government has pledged just an initial £5.7 million of the £500 million needed to fully realize the project. But what’s significant about the plan is that it amps up a transformation that is in fact already underway—it is actually the second major attempt in recent years to re-green the English landscape.

That first attempt lies roughly 100 miles south, in the English Midlands, where a vast new woodland stretching across a 200-mile strip is steadily reaching maturity.

First planted 28 years ago, the National Forest, as it is called, is just beginning to mature and reveal how transformative such a rethink of the landscape can be. Like the new northern forest, it’s not just about providing a new carbon sink and leisure facility, but also about imagining what a landscape partly denuded by industrial exploitation and grazing can look like once these uses become obsolete.

This sounds wonderful—but first, a reality check. If Britain is planning new forests, it’s because the island badly needs them. Overall, the U.K.’s landscape contains one of Europe’s lowest proportions of woodland: just 13 percent.

No one expects a populous, heavily developed country like the U.K. to reach the levels of, say Finland, which, at over 73 percent woodland, is Europe’s leafiest country by far. The U.K. trails far behind its more comparable neighbors Belgium (22.6 percent woodland) and France (31 percent), making it look decidedly bare and patchy by comparison.

This is especially true in England, which is just 10 percent woodland, compared to 15 percent in Wales and 18 percent in Scotland

https://www.citylab.com/environment/...m_source=atlfb
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