Trees

Trees and woodland play a prominent role in the Hampshire landscape. They’re wonderful homes for a multitude of mammals, insects and birds, and provide a wealth of resources for our wildlife.

Hampshire tree strategy

As part of our tree strategy and commitment to tackle climate change, we’re going to plant one million trees by 2050. To help achieve this, we aim to create a county-wide forest through the Hampshire Forest Partnership.

By connecting existing woodland sites and increasing the number of trees in the areas through group tree planting, we’ll create a large forest and help tackle the climate crisis.

This forest will increase carbon sequestration (the capturing of and storage of carbon dioxide) and benefit wildlife, as well as providing a beautiful backdrop for walks and adventures. It will also increase biodiversity and give more access to plants for pollinators.

Tree management

The County Council has objectives to consider when managing trees across our countryside. These are:

• control the risk to people and structures from trees
• conserve the biodiversity value that trees provide, including old and decaying trees
• avoid unnecessary removal, disfigurement or damage to trees with amenity, landscape or wildlife value
• trees and woodland will normally only be felled for purposes of safety, access management, timber production, conservation and heritage preservation

Find out more about our tree management strategies.

Ash dieback in Hampshire

Ash dieback is a fungus disease seriously impacting ash trees in the UK causing them to die or be significantly affected.

The main signs of ash dieback are:

• dead branches
• blackening of leaves, which often hang limply on the tree
• discoloured stems, often with a diamond-shaped lesion where a leaf was attached
• trees may eventually drop limbs, collapse, or fall

What we are doing about ash dieback

We have been monitoring the spread of ash dieback on a site-by-site basis. Ash dieback is widespread. We are working with partners to make plans and take action to respond to the spread of ash dieback, particularly in hotspots where the ash is affected the most.

The County Council is producing an action plan to help reduce the impact of ash dieback on the county’s nature reserves. The first stage will be to identify any affected ash trees where there could be a risk of branches or entire trees falling.

We manage these trees to minimise any risk to people or property, by: felling (cutting down trees), crown reducing trees (remove certain parts of the tree), excluding people from areas where we are looking to keep ash trees a part of our work to promote ash dieback resistant trees.

To tackle the impact of ash dieback we are:

• replanting appropriate trees
• allowing natural regeneration to take place

We have lots of advice and information about ash dieback, or you can email enquiries to [email protected].