Forestry Commission Area Update East and East Midlands
Forestry Commission Area Update: East & East Midlands, August 2022 Funding updates and news Promotions and campaigns Articles and resources Training and events Job opportunities Funding updates and news England Woodland Creation Offer to transition into Local Nature Recovery scheme in 2025  The Forestry Commission has announced that from 2025, the England Woodland Creation Offer will become part of the Local Nature Recovery scheme – one of the new environmental land management schemes. Future Local Nature Recovery design, and the approach to payment rates for planting trees, will largely mirror those within the England Woodland Creation Offer – meaning there is no reason to delay tree planting. The majority of new applications for woodland creation payments from 2025 will be made through the Local Nature Recovery scheme, or another environmental land management scheme depending on the size of the new woodland. We expect existing England Woodland Creation Offer agreement holders will have the opportunity to transition their maintenance payments into the Local Nature Recovery scheme from 2026. Read more on the Future Farming and Countryside Programme blog. Major expansion of woodlands for communities across England The Forest of Marston Vale, Greenwood Community Forest, Thames Chase Community Forest and the National Forest receive share of funding Millions of trees are set to be planted nationwide, thanks to £44.2 million in funding for Community Forests and woodland creation partners. The investment will create larger, well-designed and more diverse woodlands which will be more resilient to climate change, as well as natural hazards such as wildfires and storms – playing an important role in helping us adapt to a warmer world. They will help to reduce flood risk in vulnerable areas, provide sustainable UK grown timber and provide more places for nature and biodiversity to thrive. To find out more read the press release on GOV.UK. To see what grants are available from our partners, please visit Regional woodland grants and incentives. Nature-based Solutions for Climate Programme Are you looking to create or restore habitat at a landscape scale? This pilot is co-sponsored by BEIS and Defra and is led by Natural England in partnership with the Environment Agency, RBG Kew, and the Forestry Commission. The Nature-based Solutions for Climate programme offers one-off grants to partnership-led pilot projects. Projects must achieve habitat creation and restoration at a landscape scale – an area of at least 500 hectares in size. Successful applications will receive part of a £5 million pot from public funding. Applications are open now and will close on 29 August 2022 with the funding running until the end of March 2024. Find out more about the grant on the GOV.UK page Nature-based Solutions for Climate: apply for a habitat creation grant and in the Natural England blog post New Grant Scheme Opens: Nature-based Solutions for Climate Change at the Landscape Scale. Claiming for your England Woodland Creation Offer (EWCO) Annual Maintenance Payments If you have completed planting and all capital work on your scheme, please note that we must have received your final claim for capital work by 31 August 2022 for your annual Maintenance Payments to begin this year. Please see our e-Alert from 27 July for more information. Don’t miss an update! To keep up to date with the latest grant information, make sure you have signed up for our Grants and Regulations e-alerts. Promotion and Campaigns  Calling all nature loving farmers Are you a farmer or do you know one who has planted trees to support nature? Would you be interested in inspiring your peers to do likewise? If so, we’d love to hear from you. We are looking for a farmer or farm manager to take part in a forthcoming webinar to showcase how they have planted trees to support nature recovery as well as helping their farm business. The webinar will last between 35-45 minutes and comprise a presentation followed by a Q&A session. As part of the webinar, to showcase your work in this field, you would need to be willing to either create a presentation with support from the Forestry Commission or talk about your project for approx. 20 – 30 minutes, and then answer questions from attendees. If you would be happy to share your story with others and think you could help, please do get in touch and we can share more details. You can email us at: Helen.Moore@forestrycommission.gov.uk Getting it right: Applying for the England Woodland Creation Offer webinar – watch on-demand Our webinar from Wednesday 20 July is now available to watch on-demand. If you’re thinking about applying for EWCO, this webinar will help you with the practicalities of applying and increase the chances of you getting it right first time. Topics covered include: Things to consider before applying Brief overview of the England Woodland Creation Offer Application process Common mistakes and omissions, and how to avoid them Example of a successful application Watch now. Articles and resources Over 100 new and revamped parks to level up towns and cities across the UK (Press Release, GOV.UK) Reducing the impact of deer on the natural environment – consultation opens (Forestry Commission blog, GOV.UK) Tigers and hawks in our forests (Forestry Commission blog, GOV.UK) Addressing the possible shortfall of oak for the 2022/23 planting season (Forestry Commission blog, GOV.UK) Forestry Commission introduces further controls to tackle bark beetle tree pest (Press Release, GOV.UK) Quantifying the sustainable forestry carbon cycle (Forest Research Report, forestresearch.gov.uk) A year in: Farming in Protected Landscapes Farming in Protected Landscapes is a national programme running in each National Park, and Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in England, it launched in July 2021 meaning the programme has now been open for just over one year. In that year: 203 projects to reduce flood risk have been funded 1,831 farmers are now working with Protected Landscape bodies via programme funded projects The programme has created 25 new farm clusters and helped support 62 existing ones More than 1,000 projects have been approved for funding so far Find out more about the programme and read case studies from the past year in the ‘Farming in Protected Landscapes’ report. Royal Forestry Society: Managing for Resilience, and Managing Ash Dieback Case Studies RFS have published 20 new case studies in partnership with the Forestry Commission across two reports focused on woodland management. As ash dieback continues to impact woodland across the country, the case studies in ‘Managing Ash Dieback’ covers the experiences of landowners and managers in managing the disease. ‘Managing for Resilience’ includes the winners and runners up in the All-England Woodland Resilience Awards which were hosted by the Forestry Climate Change Partnership to mark COP26 and shares the experiences of woodland facing up to the challenges of climate change. Training and events Seed Sourcing for Trees of the Future webinar – Tuesday 13 September Institute of Chartered Foresters will host a free one-day webinar, supported by Defra and the Forestry Commission. Attendees will hear from technical experts as well as commercial seed suppliers and landowners. Topics covered will include how to effectively manage existing seed sources, identifying and registering new seed stands and the planting of seed orchards. Seed stands are defined groups of trees in the landscape from which seed is collected. Seed orchards are planted using seed or clonal material from known parents and are generally situated outside of the natural landscape in an area convenient for seed collectors. Sign up now – Tuesday 13 September. Job opportunities Business Development Advisor – Deadline 5 September |