Forest Research - Forests

Forests

The Forestry Commission manages approximately 1 million hectares of land, over half of which is in Scotland. The largest forest managed by the Commission is Galloway Forest Park in Scotland; at 300 square miles it is also the largest forest in Britain. The Commission also owns Kielder Forest, the largest forest in England.

When the Forestry Commission was founded in 1919 it inherited several forests, some of which were former royal forests and contained ancient woodland. Much of the land bought by the Commission in its early years was intensively planted with conifers. Kielder was one of these "new" forests, having been planted in 1926.

The early reliance on conifers, which usually grow to the same height and have a very dark colour, led to criticism that the forests appeared too artificial. The Commission was originally given land with low soil quality, usually in highland areas; conifers were used because they can grow in these difficult conditions. By the 1960s these trees were almost fully grown and the Forestry Commission received a large number of complaints that they were an eyesore.

Since then, landscape improvement has been a key feature of the Forestry Commission's work. All forests are covered by a Forest Design Plan, which aims to balance the different objectives of timber production, landscape amelioration, ecological restoration, recreation provision and other relevant objectives. Forest management is a long term business, with plans frequently extending for a minimum of twenty-five or thirty years into the future.