All donations to this appeal will go into our Wild Woods fund for woodland restoration work across all our properties.
Help bring back our wild woods
Our forests play a crucial role in healthy ecosystems – providing clean air and carbon storage as well as important habitats for some of our rarest animals, such as red squirrels and pine marten. But human impact – including centuries of felling for timber, and ever-increasing numbers of deer and sheep – has had a devastating effect.
Native trees now cover just 4% of the UK, and remaining areas of ancient woodland are sparse. Plantations of exotic tree species, packed too densely for other wildlife to thrive, still make up much of our tree cover, while the mountain woodland that should stretch across our uplands is rare or missing entirely. It’s vital that we work to repair this damage and bring back our wild woods. Please donate to our Wild Woods Appeal today and help these lost forests return.
How your gift will help
Your support will help to restore native woodlands across all the wild places we care for
Restoring mountain woodland
Mountain woodland is a rare upland habitat in Britain due to grazing pressure and muirburn. We're planting thousands of montane trees such as downy willow at Glenridding and Schiehallion to restore this important habitat, and working to reduce deer grazing impact.
Regenerating trees at Skye and Knoydart
Public support for the first phase of the Wild Woods programme in 2019-2020 raised more than £60,000 towards planting 50,000 trees on Skye and Knoydart and helping to restore this unique habitat, part of the Celtic Rainforest. This newly restored broadleaf woodland will create a habitat for species such as bats, shrews and woodland birds, and increase the prospects of future natural regeneration.
Joining old and new woodlands at Schiehallion
At East Schiehallion, we're working with partners and neighbouring landowners to create the Heart of Scotland Forest, stretching across 3,000 hectares of Highland Perthshire.
Turning forestry into native habitat at Glenlude
At Glenlude in the Scottish Borders, a former sheep farm and forestry plantation, we're gradually replacing non-native conifers with native broadleaf trees and planting native woodland on open grassland. We're using seeds collected from trees on site and locally, which we grow in our tree nursery.