A huge swathe of farmland just beyond the southern edge of Bristol is to be replanted as forest after environmentalists got a £3.85 million loan from a Bristol bank.
More than 100,000 trees will be planted along with shrubs and the creation of complementary habitats on farmland near the village of Compton Dando, in the countryside just a couple of miles south of Whitchurch and Keynsham.
A Bristol-based tree-planting charity called Avon Needs Trees has purchased a whopping 422 acres of land near the village, and the plan is to create the largest area of new woodland the West Country has seen for a generation.
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The site is at Wick Farm, a traditional estate farm that had been farmed by the same family for 200 years. Now, Avon Needs Trees have bought it and plan to create a huge new nature reserve complete with wetlands, miles of hedgerow, a new forest and species-rich grassland.
The site will be called the Lower Chew Forest and be open to visitors. “The Lower Chew Forest will have huge significance to our region, particularly as we have just 7.8 per cent woodland cover in the West of England, which is critically low compared to 13.3 per cent average across the whole of the UK,” said the chief exec of Avon Needs Trees, Dave Wood.
“Our plans will bring a huge range of benefits to nature and our communities, including helping to tackle the climate emergency, improving biodiversity connectivity and providing a place for people to volunteer, learn and connect with nature,” he added.
Having a huge forest upstream on the banks of the River Chew and its tributaries will also act as a sponge, helping to prevent flooding further downstream in Keynsham, where the Chew meets the River Avon, and on into Bristol itself.
Since it started five years ago, Avon Needs Trees has planted more than 35,000 native trees around Bristol, so another 100,000 will almost triple its entire amount in one go.
“When put together with adjoining woodland, it will be bigger than the Downs ( Clifton and Durdham) and Leigh Woods in Bristol, and twelve times the size of Royal Victoria Park in Bath,” a spokesperson for Avon Needs Trees said. “The scale of this woodland project is quite frankly immense, and one of major significance for climate action and nature recovery in our region.
The money to buy the farm was mainly from a loan from Bristol-based Triodos bank - for £3.8 million - as well as a crowdfunder from the Avon Needs Trees charity, which raised more than £171,000, along with funds from the Forest of Avon through its Trees for Climate land acquisition fund, backed by Defra’s Nature for Climate fund.
Laura Rumph, the senior relationship manager for nature, food and resource at Triodos Bank, said the project fitted the bank’s mission too.
“Our work on models for investing in nature restoration projects means we can take an innovative, flexible approach to supporting projects like these,” she said. “Recognising that collaboration is key, we were able to find ways for public and private funding to work together, tailoring a bespoke model to allow the project to scale.
“As firm advocates of the critical role the financial system has to play in supporting nature and reversing biodiversity loss, we’re proud to support what is arguably the most extensive charity-driven Biodiversity Net Gain initiative in the UK to date and hope this inspires other projects on this scale in the South West and beyond,” she added.
