Charity launches £1.5 million bid to double Pepper Wood
T
he Woodland Trust is launching a £1.5 million fundraising campaign to double the size of a woodland on the edge of Bromsgrove. The charity is looking to buy up 125 acres of farmland next to its ancient and locally treasured 133 acre Pepper Wood, which it already owns, to extend a large patch of precious woodland and create new havens for wildlife. If successful, the charity would be reclaiming the land to what it historically was – a thriving expanse of woodland. This appeal comes hot on the heels of the Woodland Trust’s launch of its Big Climate Fightback where it is urging the public to buy and plant trees. It has also announced its aim to plant 50 million more trees by 2025, which would be a fifth of what the Government’s Committee for Climate Change recommended the UK needs to help tackle climate change. Toby Bancroft, the Woodland Trust’s regional director for central England, said if the appeal is successful, more than 35,000 new trees may be planted. Mr Bancroft said: “Pepper Wood is a beautiful habitat treasured by visitors. Centuries ago, the woodland used to stretch across the arable land that is there today. By looking to extend this site we would be returning this to woodland as it once was.”
46 Completely Bromsgrove
Pepper Wood is an ancient semi-natural woodland dominated by oak and birch. Bought by the Trust in the early 1980s, the wood forms part of the Feckenham Forest Site of Special Scientific Interest. Historically the wood was coppice managed – cyclically allowed to grow and be chopped back for commercial use - but much of the site was felled during the timber shor tages of the 1940s meaning that a lot of the ecological impor tance was lost. Since reintroducing a traditional coppice cycle with the help of volunteers, the Woodland Trust has greatly improved the biodiversity of the woodland, creating structure within the canopy and a variety of habitats in which wildlife can thrive. If the appeal is successful, the Trust hopes to star t creating the areas of new woodland in the 2022 -23 planting season and is looking to complete planting by the end of 2025. To back the Trust’s appeal go to: www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/pepperappeal
