The Woodland Trust is the UK’s largest woodland conservation charity with a vision of a world where woods and trees thrive for people and nature. They fight to protect our precious ancient and veteran woods and trees and restore the ones that are damaged, creating new native woodland with the help of communities, schools, organisations and individuals. The Woodland Trust has over 500,000 supporters and 1,200 sites with free access in their care, covering over 29,000 hectares.
They are working closely with farmers to protect, restore and get more trees, woods and hedges into farmed landscape as part of productive agroforestry systems. Their recent report Farming for the Future: the climate and nature benefits of agroforestry
highlights how an expansion of agroforestry can help to increase biodiversity and achieve net zero in the farming sector here in the UK. Over the past nine years, through their Trees for your Farm scheme they have supported nearly 250 farmers to adopt agroforestry and plant 300,000 trees.
On joining Eating Better Director of Conservation and External Affairs Abi Bunker said:
“The Woodland Trust is delighted to be joining the Eating Better coalition and to help support the UK’s transition to more sustainable food production and consumption. As part of our efforts to fight for the health of people and the planet with every tree, we work with farmers and landowners to increase tree cover on farms. Through increased adoption of trees on farms, we can deliver benefits for the climate, for nature and for people.”
Welcoming The Woodland Trust to the alliance, Eating Better’s executive director Simon Billing said:
“We’re really excited to have The Woodland Trust joining Eating Better as one of the largest and influential UK conservation organisations. It’s further recognition of the benefits for nature of cross sector collaboration to rebalance our diets towards more plants and ‘less and better’ meat and dairy. The Woodland Trust has strong relationships with farmers supporting agroforestry, where trees and livestock farming can go hand in hand.”