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Woodlands and Trees

Woodland obviously forms the majority of Epping Forest's habitats, and includes 50,000 veteran trees, 300 hectares of semi-natural ancient woodland (oak/hornbeam/beech) and 1,400 hectares of wood pasture.  A veteran tree is one that is biologically, aesthetically or culturally important because of its age, size or condition, Many of Epping Forest's veteran trees are over 400 years old, and it is one of the most important sites in the whole of Europe.

Characteristics of veteran trees include large hollow or rotten stems, dead or decaying branches, loose bark, sap runs and natural depressions where water collects, all of which provide niche habitats for a number of animals and plants.  Epping Forest contains such a large number of veteran trees, because of the way they were managed in the past.

The trees were pollarded and coppiced to harvest the wood. Pollarding is a technique were a tree is cut regularly at or above head height to produce a crop of branches. Trees in the Forest were traditionally cut this way by commoners so that the branches re-grew above the reach of grazing animals. The result of such regular harvesting of branches is to rejuvenate the tree and pollarded trees usually live to greater ages than the same species of tree left uncut.

Coppicing is were a tree or shrub is cut at ground level on a regular cycle to harvest the wood. Each cut encourages more branches to grow.  Coppice was harvested in blocks, meaning that different parts of the forest were at different stages of maturity further varying the variety of habitats in the forest.

Commoners rights to wood harvesting was ended with the 1878 Epping Forest Act, which meant that traditional pollards kept on growing, becoming top heavy leading to damage.  Epping Forest began to lose 1% of its pollards due to physical collapse. Invasive species, such as holly and sycamore also began to out outcompete these ancient trees. 

Modern conservation techniques have reintroduced pollarding and coppicing, and crown reduction to try and prevent collapse. Future veteran trees are created, to replace those which will eventually be lost by creating new pollards.  Young, competing trees are removed over a number of years to allow more light to reach the veteran tree gradually as too much light too soon is often harmful.

Project has worked with the EFCT in removing competing trees over a number of years, such as at Warren Hill in 2005 - 2007 (Projects 816 - 817) and at Cuckoo Pits Woods in 2003 - 2004 (Projects 814 and 815).