Tree Champion calls for increased tree planting in Yorkshire
Written by Defra Press Office
In the first interview since he was reappointed last week, Sir William reiterated calls for land owners to take up woodland creation grants and stated that planting trees on uneconomic arable and sheep grazing land could make more financial sense for farmers.
Government Tree Champion Sir William Worsley said:
“There is quite a lot of poor economic farmland in our part of the world that could see a better return than from sheep. Those sort of areas tend to be valley sides rather than the tops of hills.
“We need to look at these sorts of areas for tree planting.”
In a separate piece which also ran Saturday, Sir William made further calls for Yorkshire to realise its tree planting potential:
“Yorkshire has the advantage of being in the Northern Forest area and the Government has contributed £5.7m to that this year. That’s just a start but it helps to get it going.
“What we also need to do is look across the whole region. The boundaries of the Northern Forest are slightly vague and therefore I think we need to be looking at the whole of our region to see where we can plant trees.”
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