We use some essential cookies to make this website work.
We’d like to set additional cookies to understand how you use forestresearch.gov.uk, remember your settings and improve our services.
We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services.
Restoration of PAWS is an important procedure for the overall improvement of woodland biodiversity and is currently of great interest to woodland managers.
PAWS are sites that have a long history of woodland cover: they are ancient semi-natural woodlands on which the original, “natural” woodland was cleared, and replaced by a plantation of either native or exotic species.
There are several factors driving the restoration of plantations on ancient woodland sites. These include:
Conifers | Pines | 39 |
---|---|---|
Spruces | 35 | |
Larches | 20 | |
Douglas Fir | 17 | |
Others/Mixed | 10 | |
Total | 121 | |
Broadleaves | Oak | 19 |
Beech | 15 | |
Ash | 11 | |
Birch | 12 | |
Others/Mixed | 20 | |
Total | 77 |
The aim of PAWS restoration is to retain remnant features of ancient semi-natural woodlands and restore the site to woodland comprising site native species. This will not be easy on some sites and the current programme of research is investigating the changes that occur on site following different silvicultural treatments:
Conifers were established on many ancient semi-natural woodlands between 1950 and 1980: for most people these probably typify PAWS. Plantations of several species of exotic conifers were established on a variety of site types and currently research is concentrating on woodlands where Corsican pine (Pinus nigra ssp. laricio) was established on clay soils.
Native species comprise approximately 30 to 40% of PAWS and those planted with beech (Fagus sylvatica), which casts a dense shade, can have a severe effect on the growth of other native trees, shrubs and herbs that would normally grow on the site. An experiment is investigating how to introduce more diversity into these beech plantations.
The area and composition of plantations on ancient woodland sites
(PDF-1524K)
Pryor, S.N. and Smith, S (2002). Published by the Woodland Trust.
Cookies are files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website.
We use cookies to store information about how you use the dwi.gov.uk website, such as the pages you visit.
Find out more about cookies on forestresearch.gov.uk
We use 3 types of cookie. You can choose which cookies you're happy for us to use.
These essential cookies do things like remember your progress through a form. They always need to be on.
We use Google Analytics to measure how you use the website so we can improve it based on user needs. Google Analytics sets cookies that store anonymised information about: how you got to the site the pages you visit on forestresearch.gov.uk and how long you spend on each page what you click on while you're visiting the site
Some forestresearch.gov.uk pages may contain content from other sites, like YouTube or Flickr, which may set their own cookies. These sites are sometimes called ‘third party’ services. This tells us how many people are seeing the content and whether it’s useful.