Why create standing deadwood

[pahoppy]

Standing deadwood is a fantastic habitat.

It is the start of the woodland eco-system. Many centipedes and millipedes are among the many thousands of insects and invertebrates that live on standing deadwood.

It is suggested that Oak are good trees to ring bark as their deadwood has greatest habitat value as it supports the greatest number of species. Birch also has good habitat value but it is not a long lasting. Ash on the other hand supports far less life. UKWAS (UK Woodland Assurance Standard) recommends stems greater than 20cm diameter.

It has been recommended to ring bark groups of trees in relative proximately as the creatures relying on this type of habitat are small and so may not easily travel larger distances.

I feel that there are many woodlands that are too small to qualify for Forestry Commission grants but that would benefit from more standing deadwood as they are relatively young woodlands or have been clearfelled in the relatively recent past.

[MartreCycle]

Pehaps the (too) numerous, squirrel ringed Birch I have are an unexpected positive for nature.

[Toby Allen]

There's a grant to ring bark trees???? ***** me whatever next.

Nurses and teachers being laid off (as well as F/C staff) and you get government money to make trees worthless...Fair play to leave a few on a job and keep nature in mind during forestry operations, but I'm not sure it's a good allocation of funds that should be supporting the forestry industry.

I'm sure Phil will agree it's a bit like hazel being put on long rotations for doormice. In theory very nice, but completely unsustainable, unless a grant is paid it will never be cut. On a working rotation its got an economic value and folks will pay to cut it. Nature should be a by product of a thriving woodland economy, not an industry in itself.

Sorry to rant but it's a niggle of mine, grants should be paid for planting future timber, access for extraction, training for workers and anything else to improve the industry.

A wood that pays.................................

[greyman]

My word - let's ring bark trees to create dead stuff to fall on people. I can just imagine the insurance companies' reply to your asking them to handle the claim from the tree that falls out on to someone.... "So Sir, can you just run that by me again - you ring barked the tree to kill it AND left it standing - what did you expect to happen after you killed a standing tree - several tons of standing wood won't hold it's self up for long you know.... Oh, they gave you a grant for it: well that makes it O.K. then, we'll just pay out the £2 million to the family of the person the tree killed when it fell on them. No, no, sorry we won't be offering insurance next year sir, perhaps you could ask for a grant for that.....

Sorry, I know that is not the intention of the post but I'm with Toby - let's make the forestry worth keeping and using - the bugs, flora and fauna have developed over the centuries when woodland was a resource that was used to produce timber - let's make the grant's available for that use and not to kill trees. Let's leave that to the pathogens, bacteria and squiggels

Love and bananas,

Greyman

[Fuzzy-Felt Bloke]

I think people have misread the original post, it does not state that there are any grants for ring barking trees, and there never will be. It seems very strange to me that anyone would want to ring bark healthy oak trees, when all you need is a mixed aged stand that offers trees in various stages of growth including dead wood. If there is a young woodland then dead wood can easily be introduced by the use of Silver Birch, a very common practice of producing dead wood quickly. It is worth noting that dead standing wood is very important for the ecosystem of a natural woodland.

I'm also one who believes that a woodland should produce timber, I'm not in favour of clear felling like traditional forestry, yet I do accept there is sometimes a place for it. It would be much better for wildlife and the wood if we started to look at continuous cover forestry, which thankfully the FC has started to do within some of their felling plans.

Tom

Wildlife & Environmental Training Company

www.wildlifeenvoronmentaltraining.co.uk

Helping Nature While Helping Yourself

[greyman]

You're not wrong there Fuzzy-felt! Teach me to fire from the hip! never-the-less the sentiment behind my post remains the same - as you say most of us have enough dead wood in our woods without ring barking trees to make it.

Greyman

[Twybill]

I wonder why it is that a felled tree will coppice, yet if you ringbark the same species the tree dies.

If niches for rot and deadwood and associated wildlife are required, why not try pollarding? This also helps to space trees out without felling or ringbarking.

[Fuzzy-Felt Bloke]

Coppicing results from lower dormant lateral buds being activated due to damage or cutting of the apical buds on the tree stem, it does not matter at what height that the damage takes place (coppice or Pollarding), therefore any tree that has less apical dominance will produce new shoots even if the tree is ringed barked. It is worth noting that as trees mature there is less chance of new growth being produced when the stem is cut. You may be seeing very good shoot growth from a young stem but little or any at all from a mature stem even within the same species of tree. There is a school of thought that coppicing higher, say 2 - 3 feet the growth is stronger, known as coppicing like a beaver.

There is no reason that Pollarding produces dead wood in fact like coppicing (but not to the same extent) will produce a healthier living tree.

Interestingly there is a need for dead wood throughout the horizontal layers of a woodland as species can feed at different height within the layers, and even at different heights depending on session (woodpeckers)

I did see years ago a midland countryside ranger service (I won’t say which council) ring-barked unwanted trees (Sycamore) in a country park, this resulted in a big back lash from the locals, so in the end they (the rangers) drilled holes into the tree a filled it up with herbicide and covered the holes with mud. The result was a slow dying tree that most of the locals did not notice.

Tom

Wildlife & Environmental Training Company

www.wildlifeenvoronmentaltraining.co.uk

Helping Nature While Helping Yourself

[Twybill]

What Fuzzy-Felt says sounds logical but I have ring barked a lot of trees and no resultant shoots below the barking have emerged. I was surprised by this, particularly as similar aged trees of the same species when felled, did produce coppice shoots. It may be because a ring barked tree can take up to 7 years to get the message and stop producing leaves in the crown, so this continuing shade may inhibit the lower coppice shoots to form.

Oaks, not being apical dominant, are good for producing epicormic shoots whenever light levels are increased.

Starting a new pollard on a tree above a certain diameter inevitably creates rot at the cut height and leads to a hollowing out of the pollard head. Also there can be water filled hollows which soon fill with detritus and silt. This is the rot I was referring to which can be beneficial and long lasting, unlike the standing dead wood which soon becomes fallen dead wood.

Coppicing higher (and pollarding), may produce stronger growth because they are above the competing grass and bramble height but also because the stems are cut on younger wood, which is more vigorous at responding.

I like Fuzzy-Felts notion of dead wood at different layers and this is why pollarding can help in this, also birds love to nest at this height in the natural whorl of branches and the platform created.